


Ketchup and the Crocodile

by yellowb



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 20:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12328752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowb/pseuds/yellowb
Summary: After her resurrection, Buffy runs away to lovely, brash, anonymous NYC.





	1. Strange Solitude

**Author's Note:**

> For Gershwin, who believes she is a lapdog.
> 
> Many thanks to OffYourBird and sandy_s for their insight, enthusiasm, and encouragement at the draft stage! I didn't always follow their suggestions in quite the way they intended, I think, but they were both wonderful. Also, some EF-reader comments on what worked and didn’t on my Impossible fic proved incredibly helpful. 
> 
> Canon stands through the fifth season, but Joss’s comments outside the series do not. I own nothing from the show and seek no profit.
> 
> Warnings: Suicidal ideation, underage drinking, rude language, and unrepentant flouting of NYC’s leash laws.

_February 2002_

 

Some nights, even after a double shift, Buffy still had energy to burn.  Those nights she would walk the whole way home, from Tribeca through Chinatown, and across the Brooklyn Bridge.  In the wee hours on the bridge, as the great stone arches reared up above her, she could have been a visitor to the New York of any decade, encased in the strange solitude of the lone walker through a city of millions.  She’d trek straight down the many distinct versions of Flatbush Avenue — corporate Flatbush, desolate outside of business hours; skeevy Flatbush, still whoring and hustling as it skirted Fulton Mall; and the forest of Flatbush, where the road cut diagonally across Prospect Park.  Sometimes she ran the last couple miles, venerable trees arching to the right, followed by the zoo; the Botanical Gardens stretching to the left.  Her own neighborhood, just on the far side of the park, was poor and familial, streets empty in the early morning — though once she’d come across the youngish, fro-hawked man from the other basement apartment in her building, quite possibly high and goofily delighted to see her out in the world.

Today had been Valentine’s Day, the restaurant packed with couples.  A few had been flush with delight in each other.  The bulk wore perfect clothing and rigid smiles.  Sentenced to feel romantic, they broke rocks through four courses of prix fixe.  She and Carly, her more experienced fellow waitress, were working up a menu of failing love.  The steak signified cheating; the salmon, a secret meeting with a divorce lawyer.  The ravioli eaters were still lying to themselves.  When the last bittersweet chocolate mousse had been cleared and she stepped outside, well past the usual closing hour, the air was snappingly cold.

So tonight she’d taken the F train to Brooklyn, to the wealthier and more accessible side of the park, and was walking across it, her hood opening drawn tight and her fists deep in her coat pockets.  Her tiny apartment, out ahead of her in the night, was dark and sparsely furnished.  The stove had only two burners above an oven so narrow she doubted a cookie sheet could fit inside.  The terra-cotta floor would probably still be cold against her feet in August.  But the radiator output was prodigous, and her bathroom positioned so close to the building’s water heater that whatever the demands of the other occupants, she had an endless supply.  Tonight she’d shower the feeling back into her toes and then nestle into her comforter.  Even thinking about it warmed her.

Over the last couple of months, her familiar route across the park had been turned strange by a homeless shantytown sprung up across one of the wooded hillsides.  There was a lot of noise in the tabloids about it being disgraceful and dangerous.  A disgrace to the city’s concern for its people, perhaps.  But as far as Buffy could see, the danger was all to the people living there:  they were easy prey, exposed to outsiders and the elements at the worst time of year, and difficult to trace if they should go missing.  And though she wasn’t demon hunting any more, had hung up her spurs and her sheriff’s star, she kept alert for tell-tale tinglies as she passed among the dark, quiet tents and lean-tos.  These people — well.  Everyone else had turned away.

She often felt vampires nearby in Manhattan, sometimes in surprising places; but here where they could have savaged the whole camp at their leisure she had yet to sense anything.  This was a setting for mundane, lowercase-e evil.  Maybe some drug use, probably some petty theft, hopefully no sexual assault.  Certainly plenty of despair huddled amid the cardboard walls and shopping carts, and wasn’t that these people’s greatest crime:  their misery and sorrow made so glaring that no one could hide from it.  The Scoobies would combust like vamps in the sun faced with such a thing.

As the make-shift shelters came to an end, she emerged into a meadow.  She heard a sudden yelping, and felt her head swivel involuntarily, a surge of energy up her spine.  But this was canine distress, not human.  Three dogs raced past, thin but beautiful as they ran, dark shapes against a dark lawn.  Their movement had the poetry of absolute volition.  A fourth came behind them, moving not so beautifully; a grim dog grimly trying to stay with its pack, its labored breath visible on the cold air.  Buffy imagined calling out to him, “Just give up!”  Crazy California girl giving depressing advice to a Brooklyn stray.  On impulse, she whistled instead, a cab-summoning whistle.  The grim dog struggled on, but the largest of the first three dogs peeled away in a wide curl while the others ran on into the trees.

The dog that trotted towards her now was tall, lean and black and ragged, and came to a stop perhaps ten feet away.  Its head and neck were lowered in a way that made her uneasy for the first time on this walk in the unlit park.  It stared past her, at about waist level, unreadable.  She regretted the whistle.

 “Go away.  Shoo!”  When it stood steadfast, she darted at it with a sharp, short burst of Slayer speed, and that worked; the dog slipped unhurriedly out of sight into the dark.

 

***

 

Trudging through the meadow towards the small stone bridge that would take her over the Lullwater, she deliberately thought of the Scoobies for the first time in the months since she’d left Sunnydale.  They’d brought her back without a thought of what they were bringing her back _to_.  A home with no family in it — Joyce graciously permitted to stay dead, and Dawn living in Spain with a man who no longer felt remotely like a father.  She’d been replaced in her calling by a girl named Betsy she would never meet (though in her mind’s eye, Betsy was cheerful and fresh-faced, straight from some farm and forever dressed in a crisp red and white gingham shirt).  Betsy had been assigned to a hellmouth in Cleveland.  Buffy was alone, with no purpose or calling, saddled with a house in default, a flooded basement, and infinite expectations.

And what for?  So Willow could still say she was the Slayer’s best friend?  Wil hadn’t checked on anything — not where Buffy was being brought back from, and not whether a new Slayer had been called.  The Scoobies hadn’t found that out until they’d tried to call Giles in England, to come help manage their unappreciative resurrectee.  Willow had looked disconsolate after the call, and hadn’t relayed much; Giles hadn’t appeared.  Tara had a kind soul, but she didn’t second-guess Willow.  And Xander and Anya just seemed uncomfortable, as though Buffy was throwing a wrench in everybody’s plans for selfish reasons that shouldn’t be given added weight through anything as heavy as discussion.

 

_“Why didn’t you try to find out where I was, Wil?”_

_Willow turned on the tremulous voice, the how-can-you-accuse-me eyes.  “I thought — we all thought we knew.  You disappeared into a hell portal —”_

_“I didn’t disappear.  Willow, you buried my body.”_

_“Well, you died closing it!  And now — what.  You, you hate me, you hate me for trying to save you —”_

_“Yeah,” said Buffy flatly.  “Yeah.  I think maybe I do.”_

 

It had taken her little more than a week to hire a real estate agent to work with the bank, and then to purchase a bus ticket.  Death had turned her into a minimalist; she’d packed one small bag of clothing, no photos, and walked to the station.  They’d brought her back for nothing, to nothing, and nothing was all she wanted now.

 

***

 

Something she’d instinctively known about New York when she bought her ticket:  it was a place you could be alone.  It might teem with people, and the people might be unabashed about saying exactly what they thought, but no one felt they had a right to your attention; no one intruded.  The deliberate isolation that had become a preference post-death, and a protective shield on the long cross-country bus trip, had here become her internal landscape.  She felt as though she’d boarded the bus in Sunnydale and finally stepped down off it into the country of Solitude.

And there were days it didn’t feel like that had to do with despair at all.  She was, in fact, free of burdens in a way she’d daydreamed about before Heaven.  A new Slayer was now saddled with responsibility for the unending apocalypses.  The only family that mattered was being raised by a real, live, adult parent; and if that was a dad who had only manufactured memories of Dawn — well, honestly, Dawn was probably better off having such a ready explanation at hand for the shallowness of Hank’s fatherly affections.  As far as Buffy knew, no one had ever even told Dawn that Buffy was no longer among the dead.  Buffy hadn’t contacted anyone in the months since she’d boarded that bus.  The only reason she had a phone was in case the restaurant needed to reach her.  Sometimes she felt so weightless, so insubstantial, that she almost expected light to shine right through her.

Her life revolved mostly around work.  Initially, clutching the false I.D. that had proved largely unnecessary, she’d frequented the local bar around the corner, a lone outpost of the neighborhood’s stalled gentrification.  She’d begun to steer clear when they started calling her by name; she could drink at home.  But after a few weeks of that, she’d discovered the ice skating rink nearby in the park.  It was often full of kids goofing off, but still — the skate rentals were a flat fee, with no time limit; a policy clearly created without Slayer stamina in mind.  It became another place she could carry her solitude with her.  The crowd had no effect on just how absolutely alone she was on the ice as the hours passed; her loops avoided them all, precise and cold and perfect.

 

***

 

She was buying an egg, cheese and bacon on a roll at the bodega a block from her building when the taciturn man wrapping her sandwich grunted, “Not in here.”

“What?”  Her terrible secondhand coat?  Her flame of irritation at being kept from greasy heaven on a bun to exchange unnecessary words?

“The dog.  Should be outside.  Leashed.”

“I don’t have a —”  As she spoke, she turned.  The dog stood half in the store, with the same attitude as in the meadow earlier; not poised for flight or fight, but accepting the possibility of either.  Under the fluorescent lights she could better see how matted the long coat was, and just how thin the dog itself was — where his ribcage ended, his belly line swooped upward, concave as a cartoon greyhound.  “He’s not my dog.”  She turned back and held out a five dollar bill.  “Extra ketchup in the bag, please.”

The man passed a dollar back and turned away, scraping up something with a spatula and heaping it into a styrofoam clamshell.  He put the styrofoam and the sandwich together in a small bag and held it out, jabbing his chin toward the door.  “For the dog.  I’ll start new hash for the morning crowd.”  Buffy stared.  She came to this bodega five, six times a week on her way home, and it was the first time he’d said enough words in a row for her to detect his accent.  She had thought he was from India or Pakistan, but it sounded like Canarsie was a better bet.  She took the bag.

 

***

 

In her tiny kitchen/living room, Buffy eyed the beast.  It was stained with something oily.  It needed some sort of power wash, and probably a vet.  Healthy, it would weigh a good bit more than she did.  She’d never been comfortable around large dogs, and they’d always been wary of her, perhaps sensing her slayerness.  This one was subdued, but it had followed her into her apartment with determination.  That was fine — it could eat the free hash and then be on its way.  She filled her only soup bowl with water and set it down on the tile, placed the styrofoam beside it and opened the lid.   She unwrapped her own sandwich and sat on the futon sofa that had been left behind by the previous tenant.  

The dog didn’t move from its position against the door until she’d peeled back the foil and gotten halfway through her own meal.  It rocked the soup bowl with the laps of its large, flat tongue, and then cleaning the spilled water off the floor.  It ate the beef and potatoes just as desperately, audibly gulping, and then darted its snout under the edge of the cabinet after a stray ketchup packet.  It backed itself to the door again and sat facing her, the ketchup clamped in its jaw.  In a room this small, the dog couldn’t get more than a yard away from her no matter where it went.

Buffy had seen dogs and their owners on the street; she knew the drill.  “Drop it,” she commanded.  The dog gazed stolidly at the floor.  _“Drop it.”_

How hard could she really tug on something likely to explode?  As she shifted closer and considered the wisdom of touching the dog, a starving stranger dog, to take food away from it, she heard the barest rumbling of a growl.  The dog turned its face to the corner:  _I do not see you; this is mine._   She sat back again.  Even when she’d been the Slayer, there would have been no moral imperative to defend a condiment.  Though it was probably going to squirt.

Later, as she wet some napkins from the deli, she grudging told the dog it could stay, just the one night, just because it was so cold.  It tried to shift its face away, but finally stilled and let her gingerly circle its long, narrow muzzle with her fingers as she wiped ketchup drips from its ragged hair.  As she moved to its chest, she realized she wasn’t wiping at ketchup anymore; it was blood in the crease where its chest met its leg.  Not super fresh, and she wasn’t about to try and find out what sort of wound it was coming from — but walking would constantly aggravate any healing there.  She heard a faint rattling and realized it was the dog, shaking against the door.  Her hands, and the napkins, were filthy.

She washed her hands with dish detergent, then refilled the bowl.  She laid the more stained of her towels across the sofa.  She patted it authoritatively with a look at the dog, and took herself to bed.

 

***

 

She was there again, in the foundations of the Master’s sunken church, all flickering candles and echoing drips.  Clearly dreaming:  she was still wearing the tank top and jersey shorts she’d worn to bed.  She could feel the presence of a vampire off somewhere in the dark, old and strong.  Perhaps the Master, risen again even with nothing but sanctified bone dust to build from.  She shivered, but simply because she was cold.  There’d been a time she’d been anguished about her own approaching death.  She’d been naive.

She turned and surveyed the chamber, the rocky stalactites and slaggy walls, and there she was:  her teenaged self, face down, all virginal and tragic.  Floating, her long blonde hair and white dress ebbing and flowing softly around her in faint lapping waves, not in a puddle but an inky subterranean lake that stretched out of sight into the blackness.  This was it, she realized, a version of her original death:  the first time her friends could have just let her go.  The Slayer line would have been left unsplit, moving on through Kendra and Faith and maybe, by now, even through farm-girl Betsy.

In the dim light something was moving, slow and low.  As Buffy turned to see, a huge reptile lumbered toward the water.  A crocodile, out of its element in this chilled subterranean space.  She recognized the dream-creature from childhood.  Her mother had explained the phrase “crocodile tears” when it cropped up in some story, and afterwards it had crept through her bedroom as she slipped in and out of sleep.  She recalled her nine-year-old self’s tenderness for it, even as she had understood she was supposed to distrust its tears.

It moved with no menace, crossing the rocky surface with brute effort.  There was something mesmerizing about its progress, the flexing of its armored hide.  It must be so cold and alone down here, a tropical beast cooled straight through the marrow of its bones, charting a difficult course toward even colder water.  It entered the pool’s edge so slowly it barely caused a ripple.

The last thing Buffy saw, as she drifted up toward wakefulness, was its ancient eye just before it submerged.

 

***

 

Sitting in a plastic chair at the vet’s office that afternoon, Buffy silently cursed herself.  Her imaginary version of the dog had been going to desert her on the walk over, lope off to rejoin the pack it had imaginarily missed.  Or:  it was going to flee when faced with the waiting room, full of the scents of distressed animals.  She could have taken brief satisfaction in knowing she had acted with the best of intentions, yet she would have been prevented from emptying her small savings account on behalf of the dog, because the dog would have unwisely run away.  But the real dog … it trailed her, just beyond her peripheral vision, still right there every time she reluctantly turned her head to check.  When she’d held the door to the clinic open, it paced past her and sat near a cat carrier.  Also, by some chance, directly beneath a green canister on the counter labeled “Dog Treats.”

The vet, a youngish, harried-looking man, was quick in his examination, and quicker in his questions.

“How’s his general health?”

“I … don’t know.”

“Any vomiting or diarrhea?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at her.  “What’s his name?”

“I have no idea.  It’s not my dog.”

“How old is he?”

“I don’t _know_.  I was out in the park last night, and it followed me home.”

“Lucky dog; it’s very cold.”  He wheeled his chair back and considered the dog.  “From his teeth, I’d guess he’s adult, but not old:  three, four, maybe five.   He’s been fixed.  We’ll scan for a microchip when we draw blood downstairs.  We’re going to have to shave the wound area to see how bad it is, but I think he’ll need stitches.  And he should get his shots, so you can get a city license.  Standard blood work for kidney function and heart worm; and you’ll have to hold off on starting preventative meds for that until the results come in.  But there’ll be a general antibiotic right away, and I can worm him now and send you home with the followup doses.  And … ear drops.  He’s got mites or an infection; I can give you something that will knock out either.  He’s got minor periodontal disease.  But that can wait.”

Buffy stared at him.  At least one of them didn’t understand something.  “It’s not my dog?”

“It’s very cold,” said the vet reproachfully.

 

***

 

When the dog was brought back to her in the waiting room, he wore a large plastic cone; a small wad of gauze bound to a shaved foreleg; a bulky bandage with bindings that wrapped all the way around his torso and neck; and a flimsy, woven plastic leash that looped into a collar, like a slipknot.  As well as a cloud of shame so dense as to be almost visible.  

Buffy felt a looming shame of her own — any minute they were going to tell her the total charges and she was going to have to flee.  She’d only given her name; they couldn’t trace her to anything; and thank all the gods for slayer speed.  But then somehow she was staring at the leash in her own hand, while the tech explained about coming back to have the staples taken out in ten days and gave her instructions on how to massage the ear after administering ear drops.  She’d also steered Buffy gently to the desk.  The tech said to the receptionist, “This is the stray.  Dr. Lyons thinks he got sliced open on a wire fence.”

The receptionist smiled at Buffy.  He said kindly, “Our good samaritan.  We’re only charging for the lab tests,” and Buffy felt something she barely remembered rising up in her:  giddiness.  Actual giddiness, about not having to move to the shantytown with her nameless dog that she didn’t like and that wasn’t even hers because of one stupid, impulsive whistle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this took me back, in a very rose-colored way, to my own (much happier!) first years in New York and I’ve borrowed heavily from that period. But I got here a good bit before Buffy would have, and the ever-changing nature of the city led to some inaccuracies (also to the Bitty Buffy challenge!). I’d initially written about Buffy living in the East Village, and walking through the infamous 80s/90s homeless village of Tompkins Square. By the time Buffy would have arrived, Tompkins Square Park had new fences, seeded grass lawns, and a curfew; and Manhattan was well on its way to pushing all the artists, the students, and the poor out over one river or the other. So I’ve relocated Buffy to my current neighborhood, and the homeless town to Prospect Park. There are people living in the Park these days, and there probably were in 2002 too, but as far as I know there hasn’t been a shantytown there since the Great Depression.


	2. Imaginary Dog

_June 2002_

 

Even as Buffy adapted her routines to accommodate a dog, she kept the situation temporary in her mind.  The imaginary dog had run away months ago; he ran away at each new opportunity, never to be seen again.  Once or twice an imaginary person offered him a suitable home.  While the imaginary dog yearned to go back to its pack, the real dog lived just inside her door — apparently entirely content to sleep twenty-two hours a day on the cool tiles, waking for dog food and walks in the park.  

As far as she knew he had never entered her bedroom or gotten up on the sofa, even though that left him a bare three yards of floor.  He still drank sloppily from her soup bowl, or if he’d overturned it, the toilet.  He’d disliked the ear drops but took his pills with fine delicacy, a bare brush of chin hairs across her palm.  At some point she had awkwardly wiped him down with paper towels, getting the most superficial of the oily grunge off his coat.  But you didn’t bathe a stray dog that was about to take off.  Besides, the apartment had no tub.

She had, however, come to enjoy the necessity of meandering walks in the park, particularly in the morning hours after her closing shifts at the restaurant.  The dog stayed close on the blocks near the apartment, wary and wolfy, crossing the avenues just behind her.  What folks were out that early were often dressed in scrubs, and they steered clear.  Though she didn’t keep track of the faces, she suspected there were some people who consistently crossed the street to avoid bringing their small, city-appropriate dogs near the leashless hound.  And she could see why.  He was a very large dog, with a wild presence to him.  The short patches of hair growing in over the pink skin the vet had shaved only made him look more feral.  If he came across some scrap of food on the sidewalk, he would grab it up, growling even after he’d swallowed it.  He actively menaced other dogs that approached her, and was unrelentingly furious with the two tiny, wheezy Pomeranians that dared live above them in her building.

Once in the park, she picked their route at random, sometimes taking the low, wooded path along the Lullwater, sometimes circling the little lake and the boathouse.  She’d seen things she might have lived in Brooklyn her whole life and never known of without a dog to walk:  moonlit fog lying low in the long meadow; a tall, multi-colored bird with neck like a snake, slurping down a fish.  

The dog had left her only twice.  Once after a heavy snow, he’d galloped floppily ahead, biting at the fresh whiteness.  And once he’d sighted a raccoon fishing something out of a trash can, coursing after it with speed that streamlined his long legs and raggedy coat into a blur.  When it escaped up a tree and he’d loped back to her, head high, she’d thought for a moment that he might actually meet her eyes; but he’d just looped around to fall in behind her again.

 

***

 

“’Lo, Slayer.”

Buffy had barely made note of it when she’d felt tinglies in the restaurant.  It had happened before — she was all live and let live these days, all look-away and not-my-job.  But the second she heard that familiar voice behind her at the bar, she had to fight to keep her lungs from heaving, the floor itself suddenly unreliable beneath her.  This life she’d made, in which no one really saw her and no one would ever really see her again because she was never going to allow there to be anything to see — it was the only life she could bear.  For just a moment, she saw herself running at slayer speed to the great bridge to take one more final leap.

“I’m not the Slayer,” said Buffy, finally picking up her tray of drinks and turning.  “Not anymore.”  She was amazed by how calm she sounded:  light and expressionless.

Spike stood by a barstool, looking at her — no, drinking her in.  He was dressed as though no time had passed, black tee and black jeans under the black leather coat.  Had he always appeared so glowingly young?  She felt old, old and damaged, just looking at him.  “‘Hello, cutie,’ then.  Never imagined you in a pixie cut.”

“Get out of here, Spike.”

“That any way to greet an old foe?  Come all the way from Barcelona to find you.”

There was a long pause while she made the connection.  The Scoobies had never mentioned what had become of Spike.  “Dawn.”

“Made a promise, didn’t I.  ’Til the end of the world.”

“Good for you.  Go back there and keep on keeping that promise.”

“You’re alive, pet.”  His head tilted, assessing her.  “Makes you part of the promise.  No way Dawn doesn’t need her sis.”

Buffy didn’t know where her rage came from.  Apparently, time had not diminished Spike’s ability to set her off.  Fear and anger surged inside her, her skin prickling with a a sudden flush of sweat.  “She’s got a real parent now.  And I’ve got nothing to offer.  Fuck off and go back there, Spike.”  She turned her back on him, walking towards the main hostess, concentrating on slow, even breaths.  She picked up menus to seat a party of four, start them off with drinks, thankful that the rote words she needed to say to these strangers fell out of her mouth without thought, a rote smile fixed in place.  The sheer mechanicalness of seating guests among the white tablecloths and place settings helped steady her.  She went about her duties, her role in the clockwork of the restaurant, as the dining room filled for the evening.

When Buffy had dug herself out of her coffin and made her way home, nothing that followed had felt as intrinsically wrong as the fact that her sister, who she had died to save, was not there.  Dawn, living with their father off in Spain, seemed as far away as if she’d moved to another dimension.  But by the time Buffy’s confusion and despair had died down, her sense of self at least somewhat realigned to reality, it had seemed right.  Caring for her mortal self again, when all her reasons for living had already dissipated into the ether of heaven, was nearly unfaceable all on its own.  She couldn’t care for someone else when she had nothing left for herself.

She thought of the ice rink, of her skates slicing across it.  It was converted to a water park now for the summer, but she’d skated all winter — and she summoned that winter version up in her mind.  Cold, smooth figures and spins, axels and luxes.  It was a shock, that was all, seeing Spike with no warning.  When there was a lull in her duties, she risked a glance back to his lean form, his leather coat and gelled hair ridiculous for the oppressive June weather, and nothing happened to her.  She could look at him, and be okay.  It would all be okay.  He couldn’t see inside her, and there was nothing to see anyway … and it was only Spike.  She’d already told him he had to go.

It wouldn’t be enough, of course.  She _couldn’t_ be rude enough or cruel enough or anything close to threatening enough to get rid of Spike with a few sentences.  And she couldn’t do more than that here, among humans doing human things in the decorous restaurant where she worked.  He would sit there all night and then follow her home, predator on a scent.  Well, fine.  It would all be fine.  She’d show him how it didn’t matter that he’d found her, how giving up on her was the only option.

“What’s with the hottie?” asked Carly, with a twitch of her well-tweezed eyebrow.  “Friend of yours?”

“Mortal enemy,” said Buffy, and felt heat flush her body again despite all her inward assurances.

 

***

 

Hours later, still at the tiny bar meant to placate patrons waiting for a table, he raised a fresh glass to her as she passed.  “’S not bad for her there, really,” said Spike, companionably.  “Hank’s a wazzock — doesn’t pay enough attention to notice the Bit’s palling ’round with someone of the undead persuasion.  But it’s good for her to have human family.  Needs her real family, though.  Needs her big sis.”

“Her sister’s dead and buried,” said Buffy over her shoulder, then felt a fresh stab of anger.  She whirled back around and came close, speaking low enough that the bartender wouldn’t hear.  “You didn’t tell her, did you?  If you told her I’m alive, I will stake you.”

“Not gonna execute a poor, chipped demon for being truthful, are you?”  He considered her a moment.  “Haven’t told her, but I’m not going to keep it from her.  You can do the telling if you’d rather.  Think up some way to explain.  Like to hear that, myself.”

“There’s nothing to explain.  Buffy died.  I’m just whatever Wil dragged back.  How’d you find out I was here?”

“Called Giles to see if I could set up some classes for Dawn.  She’s got a bit of interest in magic.  Educate her proper, so she doesn’t go all rogue and resh … resurrectiony.” 

“You’re lying.  Giles doesn’t know where I am.”

“Does, actually.  Not the restaurant, but the city.  ’E searches for you, grieves over you.  Thinks you’ve been interfered with past bearing.”

“You’re interfering.  Past bearing.”

“Evil, pet.  Evil.”  He smirked at her — no, not a smirk.  A gentle, slightly drunken smile that just about whacked her over the head with the reality of what his slouching and terse talk and drinking wouldn’t have concealed for a second, if she hadn’t been regarding him through a lens of frantic self-preservation:  he was heart-startingly, blindingly happy to see her.  He was tamping his joy down like a champ because that was what she needed from him, to make it through this evening.  

By the time her shift ended, she had … well, it wasn’t really a plan.  But she knew what she was going to do.  She was going to walk the long walk home, knowing Spike would dog her the whole way.  It would give her plenty of time to make it clear that he could do whatever he wanted; that nothing mattered to her.  That what looked like the old Buffy was just a shell, incapable of giving what he wanted her to give to Dawn, to him, to herself.  She wouldn’t bicker.  She would invite him in.  She would demonstrate.  He’d go away soon enough.

 

***

 

The first sign her minimal plan was poorly conceived came when she exited the air-conditioned restaurant.  Even at 2 a.m., the air outside was hot and stagnant, layered with scents from the piled trash bags awaiting pickup at the curb.  Her synthetic work pants were instantly damp and sticking everywhere they touched her.  She bit her lip and headed for the train.  

Spike paced along a few steps back, clearly waiting to be warned off, or argued with, or perhaps for some physical abuse.  But there was no reason she should be the one to start anything, when Spike was incapable of holding his tongue any length of time.  Let him do the work.

She descended the steps into the even greater, rising heat of the subway station, and slid her fare into the turnstile.  It occurred to her she might have to loan Spike a token so he could continue stalking her, but he jumped the turnstile beside hers with the careless grace of an old habit.

When the F train pulled in and opened its doors, she entered the air conditioning with relief and looked back — he was still on the platform.  He stared at the car floor and stepped in with odd care.  “Long time …”  He trailed off.

She couldn’t help it; she asked.  “A long time what?”

“Long time since I rode the subway with a Slayer.”  He swallowed.  It came back to her:  the night he’d recounted slaying two slayers, with a strange mixture of glee and reverence.  It felt like a conversation between two different people, a million years ago.  That Buffy had been both riveted and repulsed.  Now she felt differently:  he had taken those women out the way they were meant to go, given them a peace and relief she’d had snatched away from her.

It seemed that Spike felt differently about the memory now as well.  She couldn’t tell if it was repentance — could a soulless demon ever really repent?  But she could see that here, now, the thought of it hurt him.  His relief was palpable when he followed her off the train in Park Slope, and he dropped even further back.

It wasn’t until they neared the shantytown, on the dark path through the woods, that he finally fell in beside her.  She knew why.  Vamps ahead.  She kept walking as though nonchalant, but she was hyperaware.  She hadn’t slayed since her arrival in New York and she wanted it to stay that way, but every nerve in her body — already wound up tight from her own irrational reaction to Spike — was buzzing as they approached the collection of rough shelters.

She thought they had made it through, Spike tense but quiet beside her.  They were nearly to the meadow, with no sign of supernatural violence, and then she heard it:  a low and desperate moan, trailing off into a hitched sob.  She steeled herself to keep going … but these people: these  weren’t people who were putting themselves in harm’s way on a dare, or even giving out unwise invitations.  These were the most hapless people in the city.

She let out a little cry of wrecked frustration and spun.  She felt Spike go all loose and fluid beside her as she ran back through the trees.

The fight itself, once she was in it, could have been any of a thousand fights since she’d been called.  She could have been a girl again, whirling in the graveyards of home until it was time to climb back up the tree to her teenage bedroom.  She might be on a different coast, she might be nearly unrecognizable to herself as Buffy — but as Slayer she rose up unconflicted, filled with preternatural clarity.  Spike coordinated seamlessly with her.  It was over quickly, leaving her momentarily shocked by how much pent-up power had blasted through her.  She’d barely glimpsed the vamps’ faces.

The woman who’d been targeted didn’t seem to be badly hurt, though Buffy wasn’t able to get a good look.  She had backed away into the trees mumbling, and Buffy suspected that she found Buffy and Spike every bit as terrifying as she had the attacking vamps.  The fight left Buffy flushed and pulsing and acutely aware of Spike.  His own unnecessary breathing made her reasonably certain it was mutual.  But slay-heightened lust — that had been Faith’s thing, and it was decidedly not a part of any plan that would make Spike leave her be.  

Also, now she was starving.

 

***

 

When she entered the bodega, the man behind the counter acknowledged her with a curt nod and started on her sandwich.  Spike lingered just outside the door, lighting up.  She browsed the assorted dry goods.  Instant coffee, dusty boxes of Nilla wafers, off-brand Tupperware and lightbulbs; none of it could really distract her from the thought of Spike’s long fingers, flipping the lighter open and bringing it up to the cigarette held in his lips.  The slaying — it had left her coiled and volatile inside.  It occurred to her that she didn’t know when she’d last intentionally touched another sentient being.  Unless you counted the dog.  Or wrenching the head off that fledgling in the woods tonight.  

The scrape of the spatula interrupted her thoughts.  She headed back to the counter and handed over some bills, which the man tucked into his apron.  He fluffed open a plastic bag, then turned back to wrap the sandwich in white paper.  Buffy pulled two cans of dog food off the lower shelf and put them in the bottom of the bag; then she held the handles open to receive the sandwich and ketchup.  She didn’t think she’d heard him speak a word since the night when he had given her the free hash.

The half block to her door, Spike walked so close beside her that leather of his duster slapped lazily against her leg.  She knew exactly the look he was giving her, a sideways, below-the-lashes look; she didn’t need to check.  A trickle of sweat dripped down between her shoulder blades, stopped somewhere in the dampness of her lower back.  She had no idea what she was doing, bringing a vampire home with her, when earlier she’d been sure all she wanted was to drive him away.  She couldn’t want anything more from him.  How had she thought this would work, exactly?  

And he was going to see the dog.  She wasn’t sure why, but she was embarrassed at the thought.  The dog wasn’t handsome, with his rough clumps of scratchy fur.  Nor was he obsequious, the way you might expect a homeless dog to be.  He was loyal, yet didn’t trust her.  But it wasn’t her dog.  Nothing about the dog signified anything.

She bought herself a few moments by checking the mailbox; the roll of paper inside was nothing but catalogs and advertisements addressed to _Current Resident_.  She deposited the whole lot into the bin on her way to the back of the hall.  She headed down the narrow stairs to the basement without looking back.  Spike moved silently, but she could feel him just behind her.

She had reached the bottom of the stairs and was hunting for her keys when he suddenly closed the gap between them, his fingers on her hipbones, the breath from his words right in her ear.  “Invite me in, Buffy.”  And then somehow it was she who had turned and pulled him up tight against her, all without a moment of intent, her hand strong in the stiff gelled hair at his neck as his cool thigh slid up between hers.  If she hadn’t been hiding off by herself in the foggy flatlands of Solitude, her memories shrouded, she’d have either made sure he didn’t follow her home at all or dragged his mouth to hers sooner — because Spike’s kisses were kisses to wake the dead, kisses like a thrall, as intimately responsive as though he could feel every sensation she felt.  The hand he’d worked up under the back of her shirt, tugging her closer, was cool against her skin.  He groaned as she pushed him away to turn and fit her key to the apartment door, and muttered something including her name.

The lock clicked, and she pushed the door open — to find it stopped by the chain.  She stared at it, confused:  she’d somehow left the chain on.  But she couldn’t have.  She couldn’t get _out_ with the chain on.  All she could see of the darkened apartment through the couple of inches the door was open was a bit of torn fabric on the terra cotta tiles.  

“Buffy.  You have a roommate?”

“No.  No roommate.”  She rocked the door as though the chain might vanish.  There was no sound from inside the apartment; but then again the dog had never, as far as she knew, barked indoors.

“Can smell blood.  And there’s a heartbeat in there.”

Blood — Buffy felt rising panic.  She snaked her wrist in and flipped on the light switch.  “Hello?”  She could see now that the window to the alley was wide open.  The ironwork gate that usually safeguarded it was hanging askew from only its padlock.  Chunks of mortar and broken brick were still attached to the hinges where they’d been yanked straight out of the building.  “Fuck,” said Buffy, terrified:  her eyes were prickling.  Blood and gore were a Slayer’s stock and trade, she’d killed without a thought tonight — but if the dog had been hurt she was going to cry.  “Fuck.  _Ketchup?_ ”  She put her shoulder to the door and forced it, screws popping from the wall.  “Ketchup!”

The dog may have seemed content as a floor-dog, but he was on the couch now.  His tail made heavy dull thumps against the futon, audible over the continuous sounds of the city.  He was holding a torn scrap of denim in his teeth, stained red.

“You have a dog,” said Spike from the doorway, nonplussed.

She knelt by the folded futon.  The dog sat at attention, posture regal.  She put her hands on the sides of his angular chest and he shifted to lean into her.  He gazed directly into her face, and she knew:  the burglar’s pants leg was his gift to her, the best gift he could imagine.  But he would never, ever let her _take_ the pants leg.  She drew a ragged breath before she spoke.  “Come in, Spike.”

He stepped in and let the door shut.  “You.”  The pause stretched long, and then he spoke with wonder.  “You named your dog _Ketchup_.”

Buffy said helplessly, “He’s not my dog.”

 

***

 

There were motions that had to be gone through; they felt endless.  There were the police, with their random-seeming, disinterested questions and skinny notepads.  There was the more practical super, with his toolbox.  There was the brief silence when Buffy admitted that no, she did not have apartment insurance — as if everyone present felt she should have a moment to reflect on her deficient planning.  But it didn’t seem that any of her few possessions were missing; Ketchup had apparently been very on top of the planning indeed.  Buffy knew a few things about having a dark, silent form lunge at you unexpectedly from the shadows.  She felt the slightest twinge of sympathy for the hapless burglar, who had probably thought himself home free after prying the gate out of the bricks and raising the unlocked window without a whisper of sound from inside.

Then came the temporary fix of a padlocked chain to reattach the gate to the building, after a fashion, and some discussion of when a mason could come by to properly repair the brickwork.  The super installed a new chain lock a few inches above where the old one had been, eyeing but not addressing the jagged, ripped metal where she’d forced the door.  The sky was light by the time Buffy shut her door on all of their backs.  She had yet to unwrap her sandwich.  Spike was sitting on the foot of her bed — there had not been space for five people in the other room to stand without touching — murmuring to Ketchup as he massaged the top of the dog’s head with the fingertips of one hand.  Ketchup’s eyes were half shut, though he sat perfectly erect, nose tilted slightly upward.

“I have to walk him,” said Buffy.

“ _Ketchup_ ,” said Spike, still amused.

“Well, what should I call him?  He just followed me home.  Muttly?”

“’E’s not a mutt.”

“Like you’d know.”

“One of the noble hounds.  Deerhound, I think.”  Spike said it with respect.

“What?”

“Ancient breed.  Bet he loves to run with you, yah?  Probably abandoned ’cause he needs too much of that for a city dweller.”  Ketchup’s eyes had closed entirely under Spike’s hand.

Buffy felt sudden guilt:  she’d lived with a huge dog in a tiny space for months, but she’d never run with him.  She’d been waiting for him to go off running on his own, and not come back.

“And this one here, he’s an ambitious, brave doggie.”  Spike was rubbing his fingertips together, studying them.

“Ambitious.”

“Attaching himself to the girl with an alpha demon?  Not a path for the faint of heart.”  Spike gave her a half smile, the lines at the outside of his eyes deepening.  “I should know.”

His assumed intimacy was suddenly too much, even though a few hours ago she’d been kissing him.  “I can’t do this, Spike.  I can’t.  That futon folds out, and you can stay until the sun goes down.  But I want you gone when I get home from work.”

 

***

 

When she and Ketchup got back from their walk, Spike was slouched against the kitchen cabinets, eyeing the still-folded futon with easy amusement.  “I’m sleeping with you, love.  I’ll stay dressed.  Head to foot if you like.”  

“No!  I —”

“Room’s too narrow to open the frame.  My feet would be half up the door.”

Buffy looked back at the futon and started to laugh.  She’d never considered the absurdity of the furniture she’d inherited from the previous tenants.

 

***

 

“Spike?”  She spoke sleepily to his feet.

“Yeah?”

“How’d Dawn end up in Spain?  I mean, I wasn’t officially ever dead.  The house was still in my name when I … how’d Dad know to come get her?”

Spike was silent a moment.   

“Could tell something was up with Willow — something wasn’t right.  Wasn’t mourning.  Impatient with anyone who was.  The Bit being there in the house with her, no one looking out for her, no plans being made for her … I made her call Hank.”

“And Hank — Dad.  He thinks I’m dead?”

Spike pulled his legs up under him so he was seated, back to the wall.  “He does.  Tara took Dawn to the airport to meet him, with her things.”  There was another pause.  “I’m sorry, pet, if that makes things harder now.   Knew something bad was brewing, but didn’t guess you might be … called home.”  She felt his hand in her hair, light as a ghost.

“‘Home’ is too nice word for it.  They left me in my coffin, Spike.  Willow said they didn’t think the spell worked.”  Then, in a smaller voice:  “Is he … is he being good with Dawn?”

“He’s no Joyce, but he does all right.  He does care.  She’s headed for the two-way diploma at the American School — he likes that, gives him something to brag about.  And she has me.  Hank doesn’t ask too many questions about her tutor what only comes round at night.”

“Tutor?”  Even half asleep, Buffy was incredulous.

“Eh!  I do well by the Bit.  Was an educated man, when I was a man.  Though it’s mostly me keeping up with her — that’s her passion, the learning.  All gung-ho with the languages.”  He lay back down, this time in the same direction as she lay, tucking the sheet around her and circling her waist comfortably with his arm.  As though this was just something vampires did with their slayers.  She suddenly knew something about how he must be with Dawn.  “You go to sleep now.  We’ll get it all sorted.”  

 

***

 

She came home after work to find water everywhere in the kitchenette.  Her first thought was flat relief that this was not Revello Drive; someone else would have to fix these pipes.  But it wasn’t that kind of wet.  It travelled in splotches across the floor, and avoided the futon altogether.  And Spike was still here.  She could feel him.  She stalked silently to the bathroom and flung the door open dramatically — but there was nothing on the other side but a drowned room.  The shower curtain was flung up over the rod, the mat draped over the toilet.  Her comb was broken in two pieces, one on the floor and one among the clots of soaked, soapy hair in the bottom tiles of the stall.  The room smelled wrong, like air freshener, one of those faintly chemical approximations of a natural scent.  A soaking towel she had never seen before was tented over the sink faucet, dripping.

She listened, but heard only the endless layered street noises from outside.  She turned and crossed the kitchen, quietly pushed open the door to the bed-sized bedroom.  Across her coverlet lay the Slayer of Slayers, fast asleep on his back in drenched jeans, mouth slightly open.  Beside him in a jumble of long legs lay a wet, nearly-unrecognizable Ketchup, now revealed as a medium-grey dog with a white blaze down his chest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not sure how universal this is, but in case it's confusing: in New York, you often go up at least a half flight of stairs to get to the entrance on the first, or “parlor,” floor of a building. Because of that, “basement” apartments are often only a few feet lower than the sidewalk, and have foreshortened windows at street level, sometimes down little wells. They still feel basementy, and get the occasional cricket, with little light.
> 
> And also: in case you think this break-in unrealistic, it’s based on my only burgle. My first apartment building was next to a vacant building, which meant the air shaft was accessible from that vacant building. First someone stole my shampoo off the shower stall window sill, and then a few weeks later they tore the iron grillwork over the living room window out of the building and left it hanging by its padlock — though it was all just a terrible waste of effort. The most valuable things I owned were cans of lithography ink, tucked away in my locker at school. They did paw through absolutely everything, and successfully made off with an electric razor that my boyfriend never used.


	3. Letters from Spain

_October 2002_

 

Buffy was running from something, something powerful and indistinct, something she needed to stay ahead of.  She was injured, she was fleeing down a dimly lit corridor, testing every door only to find them all locked.  Dreams like this were fleeting, familiar, their hallways often just a short passage to wakefulness.  Their terror was a generic, bland terror.  They were part of the internal landscape she traversed each night.

When she sat up in bed, though, to her surprise she found that it was wedged into one of the nooks of the Master’s sunken church.  It was far colder here than her actual experience of death, or for that matter, her reanimation — bone-chilling.   She’d been drawn back to so many versions of this scene, so many times, and she’d yet to dream up a little warmth.  Her tinglies warned of vampires.  They were near, but she couldn’t see them.

Her bare feet looked bluish white on the rocks.  She carefully picked her way to the water’s edge, avoiding the larger debris but still wincing at small sharp bits.  She was nearly there before she noticed:  her young self wasn’t lying in the shallows, forever drowned and lifeless.  She supposed she couldn’t be wearing the prom dress herself if younger Buffy was.  The gelid water stretched into the darkness, uninterruptedly black.  She almost didn’t want to disturb it.  But it was a relief to step into the shallow water, the first stinging sensation subsiding as the cold numbed her.

She went in gradually, inch by inch, the hem of her dress floating higher and higher around her.  Somewhere out there she knew the somnolent crocodile waited.  She stumbled a little over something she couldn’t see under the surface, but recovered — everything would be alright.  The tinglies receded.  The rising chill, the stillness it brought to the core of her, was comforting.  As the water rose to her chest, it was accompanied by the oddest sensation, a soft leathery warmth in one palm.  When she examined her hand, there was nothing there.  Curious, she flexed her fingers.  Then she ran them up over Ketchup’s long muzzle to find and rub his ears, sitting up groggily in her real bed.

The dog nosed at the covers, gently animated and expectant.  She checked the time; it was almost eleven.  “Good doggie.”  It had been weeks since she had used the alarm.  If she slept late, Ketchup would try to get her hand onto his head, even if it took a little rooting through the blankets.  Beside the clock on the upturned wine crate that served as her nightstand was her notepad.  The top sheet had yesterday’s date, with _Dear Dawn_ written under it, but nothing more.

She got to her feet and headed to the kitchen to put out dog food.  Today they had a one-on-one training scheduled before her shift at the restaurant.  She had tried to avoid anything so personal.  She’d taken Ketchup to a group drop-in session at the local pet store.  Somehow, the other dog owners had not appreciated how loyally he defended her from their significantly smaller dogs.  So maybe the snarling hadn’t been great behavior, and Ketchup did have a loud and lordly bark, but that was precisely why they were at a training class.  Making the bad dog leave, untrained, seemed counter-productive.

She’d gotten a short lecture on her lack of leash and been told to call ahead.  So now she had a blue nylon collar and leash set he had never worn.  She’d nearly destroyed the ring of the collar getting his city tag onto it.   She looked at her dog, wolfing down his breakfast like he was still a starving stray.  It seemed unjust to leash a dog who had deliberately chosen to keep her company.  And the chintziness of the set pained her — hadn’t Spike called him noble?  A noble hound?  A noble hound shouldn’t wear nylon.  She decided it could wait until they were just outside the shop.  

While she made coffee, she studied the strip of photos stuck to the refrigerator door.   It was from a coin-operated booth, four stark black-and-white images, of Spike and Dawn laughing.  The camera had caught Spike in the process of switching faces and faking a bite; he hadn’t quite made it back to fully human before the last flash fired.  And there was her sister.  Her face was not quite the face Buffy remembered from Sunnydale.  She had sleek new bangs and a hint of real cheekbones.  And there was something indefinably sadder about her that her laughter couldn’t conceal.

She didn’t know how to begin to write to Dawn.  She knew she needed to do it, to somehow explain this severed second life she was living, but when she’d sit down with a pen she just ended up staring at it.  Sometimes breaking it.  She still used words, of course she did, on a regular basis — she took dinner orders, and she made jokes with Carly, and she faked her way through social conversations in a way that was apparently convincing.  But she felt as though _real_ words weren’t in her anymore — as though somehow, while her attention was elsewhere, all the meaningful words had quietly drained out of her and found their way to the floor drain.

Spike hadn’t said anything about writing to Dawn before he left.  He hadn’t made demands, or fought her, or tried to reignite the sexual hunger that had overtaken her before they’d discovered the burglary.  He’d acted with a gentleness that had undermined all her intended roughness, left her feeling a strange abandonment at getting what she wanted.  It had been perhaps ten days later that she’d come home to find a letter waiting.

She’d known immediately who it was from.  Not from the Spanish stamps, which she would notice later, but from the handwriting, as erratic yet elegant as Spike himself.  Holding the physical letter in her hand, unopened, had made her acknowledge what should have been obvious the moment she’d heard his voice behind her in her restaurant:  her anonymous, bearable life, shorn of all painful contexts or expectations, was at an end.  Imaginary Buffy, the woman with no family, would have to go off and join up with that imaginary, runaway, unnamed dog — those two could lead some sort of silent, feral life together.  Real Buffy was going to have to come to some kind of terms.

 

_Dear Buffy -_

_I’ve done my best to explain to Dawn, how you’re back but not really able to be back for her yet.  That you’re shell-shocked, and we have to give you some time.  She’s a smart kid and a good kid, but this is hard for her to understand.  Half the time she grieves and the other half she’s angry.  She doesn’t know what it’s like to come back to life._

_Course, I only know some of it — the waking up alive again bit.  But it’s different, I know that.  I came back with part of me released and gone on ahead, replaced by something new that hungered for the world.  You went on ahead, and changed, and then were forced back to a place that doesn’t fit any more.  Must be like — I don’t rightly know what it must be like.  But it’s probably not much like waking as a demon._

_Right now, she’s not able to write to you.  She crosses everything out, or rips it up, and then she cries.  She’s worried that you’ve stopped remembering the memories the monks made, that you no longer feel her as your sister.  I’ve promised that we’ll come to New York soon and see you, but not exactly when.  And don’t you even bother being upset about that.  Given she’s a Summers, there’s no way I could stop her anyway.  If I help her, at least she won’t do it as an stowaway in some unpressurized cargo hold.  Or try to post herself in a box.  I’m trying to buy you the time you need.  Just — write her, okay?  Make it so she knows you won’t disappear again.  Girl’s lost nearly as much as you have._

_Like I said, she’s angry — but she gave me the photos to send with this, and I know they’re her favorites._

_And Buffy, you must know:  you may not want to hear from me, and you didn’t want to see me, and you’re probably not happy with me just now — when have you ever been?  But love, seeing you alive and breathing … it all but made my dead heart beat._

_— S_

 

She’d been correct to think she could desert the Scoobies without fear they would hunt her down.  After all, finding her would have meant owning up to a reckless and selfish act.  But Spike on a mission for someone he cared for was something else entirely.  Spike had uprooted himself and moved to Spain to honor a promise.  If he saw reuniting the Summers sisters as part of that promise, Buffy had no doubt he’d make it happen.

 

***

 

“Look, Ms. Summers, your dog has some problems with inappropriate guarding of resources.  We see that a lot, ’specially in dogs that’ve spent time on the street.  But really, the problem is with how _you_ regard the dog. You have to be the boss here; when he misbehaves you have to make sure he knows you disapprove.”  Phil, the trainer, was a specific type of New Yorker that Buffy recognized:  entirely local in every way, blissfully oblivious to the very notion of alternative viewpoints.  Maybe those traits weren’t really exclusive to her adopted city, but she’d come to associate them with the accent.

“He’s not really my dog.  It’s not — we don’t have a dog/owner thing.  He just … he found me, and now we live together.”

Phil stared at her for a long moment, his lips just slightly parted, and she braced for an unpleasant patter about how she needed to dominate her dog.  “Look.  He ain’t no cat.  He got social needs, okay?  And I’ve been watching.  This particular dog?  He’s _all about_ you.  And he’s worrying all the time, that you’re gonna slip away and leave him.  He’s keeping the other dogs away so they don’t take his place.  All this dog wants is to know he’s yours and you’re his.  You’re not gonna have to yell,” and here Phil grinned, “not a lot.   He’s not gonna resent the leash.  He’ll probably be thrilled to have _you_ on a leash.  I’ll show you.  You put that on him, and I’m gonna go get my Hannah.  Best dog on the planet — if he nips her, she’ll just be embarrassed for him.”

 

***

 

It was jacket weather, the sun bright but slanted in a way that announced autumn, even with the leaves barely tinged by color.  Phil had been right.  Buffy was uncomfortable with the leash, but Ketchup was not.  Ketchup seemed to consider it a two-way form of communication, intelligence passing back and forth through the tension and the slack.  Though he’d gone mildly ballistic when she’d held his and Hannah’s leashes at the same time — “mildly” meaning that, though he appeared deranged, he’d never put any strength behind his doggie hysterics.  Hannah, a portly black lab mix, had been profoundly unimpressed.  Once it was clear they were all just walking together, Ketchup had slowly settled down, though he kept giving both Hannah and Buffy major side-eye.

Somehow, by the time they’d scheduled another session and left, she’d purchased a heavy water dish and a large dog bed she couldn’t really afford.  It was only October, but the floor in her apartment was already so cold her toes turned blue if she walked barefoot; she didn’t like the idea of Ketchup sleeping through the coming winter on it.  The combination of her purse, the water dish in a bag, Ketchup’s leash, and the bed — trussed into a U-shape that batted both her and the dog in the wind — made their progress comically slow.  She didn’t notice the figure struggling to get in her building door until they were almost on top of him. 

It was the man from the other basement apartment, with the vermillion fro-hawk.  It had been shaped into large spikes that now listed to one side, as though they’d been pressed by a pillow in sleep and never repaired.  Buffy and he hadn’t said more than a few words to each other, but she liked his presence on her floor; his hair might be aggressive, but his manner was gentle and appealing.  He was struggling to get a large cardboard box through the door.  “Hang on,” said Buffy.  She dropped the leash and went to hold the door open, swatting him with the dog bed in the process.

He blinked at her, but concentrated on steering the box through the frame.  “Looks heavy,” said Buffy.  Ketchup followed him in, Buffy behind them.

 

***

 

Perhaps ten minutes later, Buffy and Ketchup were standing in Ajay’s apartment.  All thoughts of the struggle to get their various packages down the narrow stairs, their grunted small talk and introductions, had abandoned her.  She wasn’t even sure he’d actually invited her to come in, but once she’d gotten a glimpse — well.  _Excessive_ was a good word.  _Overabundance_.  Maybe even, what was it, _a convertible plethora_.  At least a hundred lava lamps perched on every available surface, even across the top of the fish tank.  As she turned in the center of the studio apartment, she worked out that they were arranged, more or less, by shape and style:  simple cylinders, cocktail shakers, freeform glass; cartoon character bases and art deco-styled planets with rings.  Kaleidoscopic colors lit the walls in overlapping, shifting patterns.  The liquid interiors ranged from slow-moving globules as big as a fist to small, rapidly flowing bubbles.  Lurid two-toned lamps sat next to glitter lamps, sparkling like eternal snow globes.  The nests of extension cords were nearly as dramatic as the lamps themselves.

When Buffy tore her eyes away from the display and back to Ajay, she found that he had opened his new box.  Packing peanuts swamped the sides, and stuck randomly to the Hello Kitty lamp he’d placed on the table, its pink and white layers sloshing back and forth in thick slow motion.  He was pulling out another lamp, shaped like a rocket ship, an expression of flat-out joy on his face.  “Uh, so, Ajay,” said Buffy.  “I guess you kind of like lava lamps.”

Ajay started, then laughed; he’d clearly forgotten she was in the room.  He set the rocket lamp on the table and rooted through a pile of mail to uncover a surge protector.  “I do.  But these are for a book, a coffee table book.  The history of the liquid motion lamp.  It’s gonna be beautiful.”  He plugged the two lamps in.  “These’ll take awhile, especially in the cold.  Wanna beer?” 

 

***

 

When she and Ketchup finally went back down the hall to their own door, there was a package resting against it.  Her name and address, in the center, had been written by Dawn.

She picked up the parcel as though it were hand-blown glass or a bomb, studying it as she absently unlocked her door.  It had been covered in clear packing tape as though any brown paper exposed to the air would result in tragedy — that was Dawn all over.  When Ketchup got up beside her on the sofa and leaned his weight into her shoulder, she barely noticed.  She took a deep breath and scored through the tape with her key.  Inside the tape-mummification was a nondescript cardboard box, neatly cut down to size.  It really just served as padding for another box, nested inside, this one high-end and glossy dark chocolate brown.  She untied the gold ribbon around it and tipped off the lid.  A letter lay across the top of a fold of tissue paper.  She absently put her arm around Ketchup and pulled him closer.

 

_Dear Buffy —_

_I am SO MAD AT YOU.  And I’m mad at Spike too, because he lied about where he was going.  “BUSINESS.”  Like Spike has any business.  He says we have to be gentle and not scare you, but you oughta be scared because I am really really MAD and when I see you, first I am going to hug you and then I am going to do that scream that you say makes ears bleed._

_I was so sad when you died, Buffy, I was so sad for so long.  I didn’t want to talk to anyone and I didn’t want to do anything, cause all of it just seemed so phony.  It feels a lot better to be angry.  Is that weird? I guess it’s not your fault if you were really confused when you got back — but that was like ages ago and I need to know what happened and where were you?  I keep imagining these crazy things.  Like did you see Mom?  Were there like harps and wings and stuff?  You so have to tell me if you had wings._

_Spike says to tell you about school.  I’m really good in math and Spanish and I’m also taking Catalan.  That’s the most fun because Spike knows Spanish but not Catalan so I’m making him learn it with me.  He kind of cheats because he knows Latin and French too and he can figure out stuff faster — from roots and stuff.  But I’m better with declinations.  And it took me awhile to even want any other friends, but now I have some.  Most kids at the American School are there because their parents work internationally, not cause their dads ran off to Spain, but I’m the only one with my own vampire study-buddy.  Not that he’ll let me tell anyone._

_I’m still really mad at Dad too even though Francesca is okay and sometimes takes me out shopping.  I’m even mad at Mom for dying, sometimes, and maybe I’m still mad at you for dying?  Even though it was for me?  But at least you came back_ ~~ _even if you didn’t come find me_~~ **_Why didn’t you come find me?_**

 _Spike thinks that I think this gift was my idea.  Like he tried to make me think it was my idea to call Dad to come get me, too.  He thinks he’s all sneaky and_ ~~_sutble_~~ _subtle.  But I did pick out the bats, cause, like, it’s almost Halloween and Spike says your dog knows he’s the Slayer’s dog and I bet he keeps an eye out for everything demony_

 

There was no period at the end, or signature.  She could practically see Spike snatching it away from Dawn before she could rip it up.  Buffy carefully tore the sticker and pushed the tissue paper aside.  Below was a dark red leather dog collar, with a matching leash.  It was thick and supple, and when she lifted it to her face it smelled earthy.  Across the back of the collar were five silver studs in the shape of tiny bats.

She supposed that tears bloomed quickly on tissue paper because they were warm.  She slumped back against the futon, staring blindly at the door.  Ketchup shifted, leaning towards her and then pulling back.  Then he carefully stepped across her legs.  He eased his bony torso down into her lap.  She heard the box buckle and flatten against her thighs.  The dog carefully draped his weight against her, settled his head against her shoulder, and held very still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn’t thought of my big, shy, charming, mohawked, lava-lamp-loving neighbor in years when I started this story. Once I found I’d nabbed him to be Buffy’s neighbor, I went onto Abebooks and Amazon to see if he ever got his book published, and couldn’t find it; but I also never knew his last name. So maybe it’s out there: a beautiful, obsessive book on psychedelic liquid lamps.


	4. The Frypan

_December 2002_

 

Carly possessed such genuine physical mastery at balancing the various trays, glassware and dishes that made up the restaurant tableware that Buffy had occasionally wondered if her co-worker was in fact some sort of Waitress Chosen One.  Right now Carly carried the remains of a six-person dinner in her arms with nonchalance.  “So would you go out with him?”

“What?”  Buffy frowned at Carly.  

Carly let out an exaggerated sigh. “If the bartender giving you the googley eyes gets himself together to ask, would you go out with him?”

“Nathan’s giving me … googley eyes?” She turned to look across the restaurant at the bar; there stood the new guy.  She probably would have found him cute before her death — all floppy hair and soulful eyes.  Now he just struck her as very young.  Untempered, unaware; an aspiring actor, he was probably not much use in a fight.  She’d barely thought of him beyond committing his name to memory in case she needed to get his attention.  “I don’t think—”

“I meant Matt.”  The Chosen Waitress eyed her critically, but her voice held affection.  “You, girl, are just frigging clueless.”

“Oh.”  Matt had worked there longer than she had.  He was kind and intelligent, a stabilizing presence.  In the summer, she’d seen him break into a little dance when he realized he’d walked out into a light rain, unaware he was being observed.  “Uh — I like Matt.  I’m just not really up for dating right now.”

“It’s that hottie,” Carly said with an air of finality.

“Who?”

“You’re all hung up on the one who wore black leather in a heat wave — not too bright, maybe, but hot as a biscuit.  He break your heart?”

Buffy blinked.  “Uh, no.  No.  We’ve never, uh … biscuited.  He lives in Spain.”  She wasn’t lying; those had just been kisses — just heat-wave, post-slay kisses.  

“Never seen you light up like that, before or since.  Not about anything.”

Buffy could feel the edge of her mouth twitching.  She remembered what Carly had really seen, the bone-deep panic she’d felt when Spike first appeared.  But while Carly might be wrong on the content, she was exactly on point about the intensity.  Even when he wasn’t taking the starring role as a representative of her whole horror-show of a past life, there was always real punch behind her interactions with Spike.  Their first fight had set the bar high.

“Well.  If Mattie gets up the nerve, you could do a lot worse.  Gotta go, hon.” Carly swept away through the kitchen doors.  She often spoke of her husband, affectionately, as “my best husband so far”; Buffy had the sense that Carly thought everybody should launch themselves brashly into relationships until they found one that stuck.  There was probably no point to trying to explain to Carly that you couldn’t assume anything about what other people needed.

 

***

 

Business was slow at the restaurant.  The holidays were coming.  In another week, families would start getting together, and large parties would vie for tables, but not yet.  In the meantime, date nights were being postponed in favor of travel planning and Christmas shopping.  And while New Yorkers might be intrepid, the weather was hideous — there’d been no sun to melt last week’s record snowfall, now shoveled into irregular bulkheads, slowly filthifying, and narrowing the sidewalks.  Heavy rain had only served to turn walkwalks and curbs into a hard, slick mess when it froze overnight.  Buffy took advantage of the lack of guests to leave early.

She changed into her fur-lined boots.  She’d bought them for dog walks — once she’d accepted that Ketchup was indeed her dog, it had been obvious she needed them, as well as an ankle-length parka.  In combination she felt like she was dressed up as an oven mitt, but on frigid mornings it was nearly as cozy as slipping back into bed.  She pulled the parka hood up and steeled herself to march north to the Holiday Shopping Village that had recently sprung up in a nearby park.

The temporary huts, the inadequate space heaters, the Christmas lights:  it was all nearly too much.  The narrow paths between stalls, filled with tourists who didn’t know about New York walking speeds, or that you didn’t stroll with your family across the full width of the walkway .  The piped-in carols meant to stimulate a special kind of nostalgic guilt, appeasable only through gift-buying.  Buffy would rather have been anywhere else, except possibly back in Sunnydale.  But she had real, present-day guilt:  she needed a gift for Dawn.

Ornaments, chocolates, blown-glass terrariums, more ornaments, candles; wool ponchos, sweaters, and gloves … nothing seemed right for a Dawn she no longer knew, half a world away.  How was she even going to get a gift _to_ Dawn, living with their father who believed Buffy was dead?  Bird cages, tarot decks, lanterns.  Hand-made wooden watches.  It had been over a year since she’d deliberately leapt to her death.  Toy trains and novelty socks and artisanal mayonnaise.  When she began to experience the booths in strobing flashes, Buffy realized that she, the Slayer who faced down a Hell God, might have a panic attack over Christmas shopping.  She got herself out of the Shopping Village and into a pub.

 

***

 

She was still buzzed when she entered her building, carrying the fruits of her more successful, second trip to the huts.  That, no doubt, was why she’d made it halfway down the stairs to the basement before she realized exactly what she was feeling:  a familiar vampire signature ahead.  Of course he was back; Spike wouldn’t give up.  She already knew how he would be waiting, the exact insouciant slouch beside her door, before she turned at the base of the stairs.

And there he was, the angles of his face sharpened by the harsh hallway lighting — but not, as she’d envisioned it, by himself.  She stopped, swaying on her feet.  Ajay was leaning up against the wall beside Spike, his back to her, talking animatedly.  Spike’s eyes were hooded, looking slightly upwards at the taller man, murmuring something back to him.  Some subtle change in posture gave away the moment he became aware of her, and he broke off whatever he was saying.  “Slay— Buffy.”

Ajay turned, his face flushed.  “Buffy!  Spike was just telling me he’s bringing your sister to visit in the Spring.  I was saying, we should have a barbecue — I have the little yard, and I was thinking of getting a grill—”  Somehow, Buffy had brushed past them both and was unlocking her door.  When she turned back Ajay was looking at Spike with all the subtlety of a puppy.  “And if you need anything, an extra bed—”

“Sounds tasty,” said Spike, genially.

“Thanks, Ajay, good to see you, talk soon!” said Buffy, tugging Spike in after her and shutting the door.

“Lovely neighbor you got there.  Friendly.  Invited me right in to see his collection.”

Buffy slammed Spike back against the door. “‘Tasty?’  What was _that_?” 

“No concern of yours, is it?  Or are you taking up the slaying mantle again?”  Spike’s voice was playful, but his expression was serious.

“No!  No, I just…”  She trailed off.  “I don’t need to be the Slayer to care—”

“A friend then?  Need to protect him from the likes of me?”  He studied her with deepening amusement.  “Are you _jealous_ , Miss Summers?”

“What?  No!  But I can’t just let you … I mean, if it’s right in my face …”

“Didn’t bite him, Buffy.  And if I do, I wouldn’t hurt him.”

She stared at him, as his hands came up to lightly circle her wrists.  “The chip.  You’ve disabled the chip?  Spike, if you’re killing…” She felt like something inside her was backing up, scrambling away.  

“Buffy.  I’m not a pet vamp, but I’m not killing.  Chip’ll only let me bite if I don’t mean any harm.  Not taking without giving these days.”  He released her, and she stepped back, searching his face.

“What does that mean?  Like, like a suck house?”

“Not some fucking rent boy,” he said sharply.  “Free exchange between consenting adults is all.  Nothing wrong with it.”

She sagged backwards onto the sofa, Ketchup leaning into her knee.  His tail thumped against the floor for a moment before he moved to check out Spike.  She’d been trying to live so neatly, but she had a dog, and a friend, and a gift for her sister, and staking Spike — she honestly didn’t think she could do it.  Nothing was neat.  Ketchup nosed into Spike’s hand, and his expression softened.  “Doesn’t mean I wasn’t right amused by him just offering it all up for my hot little self.  That there’s a lonely young man.”

“The kind you used to eat.”

He cocked his head, absently rubbing the dog’s ears.  “I ate all types.  Non-discriminatory, me.”

She stared at him, her sister’s unlikely guardian, mysteriously arrived on her doorstep once again. “Spike, what are you doing here?”

“Came to check on you, make sure you hadn’t done a runner on us.  Gonna write to the Bit, yeah?”

“I’m trying.”

He studied her, and she suddenly felt herself exhausted and stressed and unkempt under his gaze.  “Doesn’t need to be perfect.  Let’s take the dog out, yeah?”

 

***

 

So here she was:  a former Slayer walking her dog alongside her former mortal enemy, who was dining on people again, consensually, through the Concert Grove of Prospect Park by the light of a cloud-shrouded moon.  What did that make her?  Just another New York City transplant?  If she looked around hard enough, checked the personals on the back page of the Village Voice, would she find her tribe here?  Settle into a social life with other former heroes?

A half-hearted snow was falling, tidying up the old drifts where they had greyed with grit.  She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she only gradually realized that Spike’s off-hand conversation was really a painstaking report on all things Dawn.  She was getting the lowdown on all her sister’s courses, including Spike’s opinion of not just Dawn’s work (excellent, Buffy was informed, in languages and history, acceptable in literature, with Spike glossing over what he referred to collectively as “the maths”), but also the quality of instructors.  He had opinions on the friendships Dawn had formed and whether they were good for her, which hinged on how they affected both her studies and her mood.  He was consistently critical of male friends.  Buffy pitied any boy who wanted to date her sister.

When they reached the little bridge over the Lullwater, Ketchup abruptly sat, head cocked.  “What’s this, then?” asked Spike.

“Anticipation,” said Buffy, unhooking the leash.  Ketchup was off like a gazelle, skidding on the icy bridge as he raced for the meadow.  “I always let him off here to — _Spike?_ ”  Spike had bolted.  For a long moment she primed for fight or flight herself, scanning for danger, any kind of unnatural darkness in the already dark tree line.  The she recognized what she was seeing:  the vampire and the dog were not attacking, but playing.  Fast and oddly similar with their rangy limbs against the snow, they took parallel paths.  They came together, and the dog feinted delightedly from side to side, until Spike darted forward; they sprang apart again to race in a wide curve.  When Spike hit an icy patch and skidded out, Ketchup responded to his shout of laughter by slowing and doubling back, barking steadily.

“Nice dog what adopted you,” called Spike, bouncing to his feet and grinning as Buffy approached.  “Mocking his fallen comrade.  What do you usually do, stick to the path?”

“Uh…”  But she didn’t have to confess that it had never occurred to her to play with the dog, because Spike was already off again, disappearing into the dense trees that led up towards the ravine.  Ketchup bounded after him.  Buffy struggled with the hem of her parka til she found the bottom zipper and could free her legs.   She took a deep breath of the crisp air and followed.

Running in the night-time woods, icy twigs hitting her face — it was exhilarating, elemental.  She could track Spike loosely by the tinglies, but the sounds the duo made in the frozen underbrush were a more precise guide.  Soon she was gaining on them.  Then all fell silent.  She slowed to a careful stalk, hyper-alert — there, she caught the particular jangle of Ketchup’s tag against his collar ring, not far ahead.  She still couldn’t see the dark dog in the dark woods.  Spike’s hair should have been easier, but with the snowy branches he was camouflaged.  She stepped forward warily.

She saw a flash of movement, and something whammed into her ribcage.  She ducked and rolled, reaching for a stake that she hadn’t carried in over a year.  She was back on her feet in a crouch before she realized:  she’d been hit by a snowball.  

 _Evil vampire._ She gathered up a double handful of snow.  She might not be the acting Slayer, and she might not have experience with this weapon, but she still had supernatural skills.  “Spike,” she called.  “You are _so_ going to die.”

“Big words!”  A second snowball burst against her upper arm, and Ketchup, leaping after it, knocked her clean over, face first into snow.  When Buffy rose up, sputtering, Spike was there reaching for her, his face concerned.  She sprang past him, tumbling him backwards, and took off into the trees.

She wasn’t sure exactly where she was, but the going was harder — downhill, for one thing, with slippery fallen leaves under the snow, and thorny.  She struggled not to go head-over-heels.  She could hear Spike’s whooping and the dog’s excited echoes as they chased behind her.  The ground before her suddenly dropped away, and she slid down an embankment to a messy, slush-covered road.  She dashed across, vaulting the iron fence on the other side, checking back over her shoulder to see her pursuit careening down the slope — and felt herself pitch forward into a deeper darkness.

 

***

 

Buffy lay still, looking upwards into slow, spiraling flakes.  She began to laugh, because she was lying in the least likely, yet most familiar, of places:  an open grave.  Empty but fresh, with little snow other than what had fallen in with her.  The rectangular shape above her opened onto trees, but they were older, sparer trees than the woods on the other side of the fence.  Somehow the situation didn’t dispel the light mood that had come over her when Ketchup and Spike had begun to play.  She could hear Ketchup barking, some distance away.  “Buffy?”  Spike’s voice was near.

“I’m here!  Over here!”  She climbed to her feet just as Spike appeared above her.  He knelt at the edge and leant down so she could grab his forearm.  “Nice work, love,” he grinned as he helped her up.  “Finding an open grave in a public park.  True talent.”

Buffy took in their surroundings.  Now that he could see her, Ketchup was no longer barking, but he was weaving back and forth on the far side of the fence, agitated.  “What are the chances,” said Buffy.  “I didn’t know there were graves in Prospect Park.”  The cemetery was old, and sweetly modest; there were regular indentations in the earth, but few of them had markers.  Of those, most were low or flush with the ground.  Only the graves closest to the one she had fallen into had vertical stones.

“Graves.  Graves, but no people,” said a reedy voice.  Buffy and Spike both turned as a thin, elderly man shuffled forward through a break in a hedge.  “Visitors have to call, call … call ahead.”  He was underdressed for the weather in a battered barn coat, with an incongruously cheerful red-and-white-striped scarf hanging loose from his shoulders.  A claw-like hand gripped the shovel slung up over his shoulder.  “You’re trespassing.  Disrespectful.”

“Didn’t mean to,” said Spike moderately, moving closer to Buffy.  “Didn’t rightly know what fence we jumped over.  Just playing in the snow.”  

The man’s laugh sounded painful, almost a cough.  “Whippershnapperss … look like trouble, you do.  Lucky dawg didn’t find you first.  Should always know what you’re jumping into.  Could be a fire.  Could be a fry … a frypan.”  He seemed to be having trouble with his jaw, or his throat; Buffy couldn’t look away as he worked his mouth, wincingly certain false teeth were going to come flying out.  Or something worse.  He’d dropped the shovel head forward to the ground, and was leaning on the handle with both hands, his body shaking.  Something fluttered at his back, and she stared, mesmerized, as twin long, knobby spurs raised up from behind him, began to unfurl sideways into leathery wings that were somehow more intensely black than the nighttime shadows.

“Now, now.  Didn’t mean to intrude,” said Spike.  It broke Buffy’s reverie, and she glanced around for a weapon.  The bat-like wings were much bigger than she would have guessed, had she been guessing about wings, with long red-tinged claw tips at the end of each rib.  She was dimly aware that Ketchup was now whining frantically.

“Dissrespectful!  Thiss is a place of resst.”  The creature released the shovel, leaning back as his jaw extended into a new, pointed chin with sharp white teeth.  As he turned away, his wings swept a musty air towards them, and Buffy shuddered at the mouldering smell.  She bent forward and hefted the spade.  “Well, come … long … gate …”

Buffy swung the shovel forward and down like an axe, bringing the flat edge into contact with the back of the monster’s neck.  There was a crack, and he fell forward into a heap of billowing black, stark against the snow, wing struts poking up at strange angles from the ground.  

“Not sure that was necessary,” said Spike doubtfully.  “Think he was showing us out.”

“But … but he was a … well, I don’t know what he was, exactly, but …”   The body was bubbling gently on the ground, subsiding into a slick black pool on the snow.

“Think he was a Gar’gh’l, love.  Probably just here to keep these—” he looked around a moment, assessing.  “These Quaker bones safe from grave-robbing nasties — _aargh!_ ”  

As Spike was dragged backward into the hedge, Buffy got only a flashing impression of something huge and furry, with eyes:  far too many eyes.  Ketchup’s whining had stopped, but Spike was thrashing and cursing, and she barreled after him, shovel raised.  

When she got through the hedge she slowed.  The thing fastened onto Spike, hauling him backward towards a small white building, was an amorphous mass of fur and feathers.  It jerked to a sudden stop, and Buffy realized it was on a chain — it had reached the limits of its tether.  A circular path worn in the snow described the limits of its territory.  It was growling.  Spike hung slack from its jaw, in demon face, the bulk of him between her and it.  Blood coursed from where the thing was clamped onto his shoulder.  His eyelids were fluttering.

“Spike?” asked Buffy.  “Spike?  Are you with me?  Do you know what that thing is?”

“Feeling a bit … sleepy, sweetheart,” said Spike.  “Guessing this here’s … dawg.”

Buffy circled to the right, slowly; the thing had so many stalky eyes, so randomly arranged, she wasn’t going to be able to surprise it.  But she’d like at least to be in a position where she wasn’t going to have to deal out blows around Spike’s body.  His head lolled back as she watched.

“Drop it!” Buffy’s command was no more effective than it would have been with Ketchup.  The creature moved a little ways along the curved path, dragging Spike, its growling intensifying.  Suddenly the ominous sound was joined by a rising wail.  Ketchup, now inside the fence, was approaching in a low, predatory creep, teeth bared. The dog was outside the creature’s circuit, safe for the moment, but he might move into the dangerous range at any moment.  Buffy launched forward, bringing the edge of the shovel down as hard as she could in the general area of the many eyes.  

The thing released Spike with a scream, and then let out something like a wet sob; Spike’s body fell sideways.  As Ketchup snarled and lunged, she brought the shovel down again, then dove in for the vampire, dragging him out of the circle.

He was unresponsive, and after a frantic moment she realized there was no way to assess how he was doing.  He was cold because it was cold out, and he had no breath or heartbeat to listen for.  Blood soaked his duster, and when she pushed his eyelid up, the inertness of his eye was disturbing.  But he wasn’t dust.  She would have to leave him lying in the snow while she took care of the animals.

Ketchup, thankfully, had followed her; he was agitated, but allowed her to leash him to a branch.  Then she approached the dawg-thing.  It was moaning, sounding unsettlingly like a child, a portion of its mass caved in from her blows and leaking a rank black liquid. She could see that the leash was attached to a harness of sorts.  She cautiously picked up the shovel.  Nothing about this felt right, even though it had attacked Spike — its cries were piteous, and it wasn’t moving to defend itself.  But she couldn’t leave it, to starve on a tether and maybe hurt someone else.  Mercy, she thought; this was mercy.  She took a deep breath and swung the shovel down.

 

***

 

She’d ended up shoving Spike out of the cemetery the same way her valiant deerhound had apparently forced his way in:  a fresh-dug scrape under the gate.  The vampire had yet to open his eyes, or even so much as twitch.  She’d carried his limp body home, grateful that barely anyone was out in her neighborhood in the pre-dawn hours to witness her strength.  The sky was lightening by the time they reached her building.  She let Ketchup head to the basement ahead of them and followed, cursing when she smacked Spike’s head into the wall at the narrow turn.  She got the rest of the way around the corner to find Ajay staring at them both.  When their gazes had locked for a moment, he suddenly shut his mouth.

Then he helped.  He got her keys from her and unlocked her door, holding it open; he balanced Spike’s rag-doll body in a seated position while she worked the bloodied duster down off his arms.  If he stared for a moment after she stripped Spike’s shirt off, well, so did she:  even with an enormous bite mark around most of his deltoid, he was strikingly pale, chiseled and pretty.  Though maybe Ajay was looking at the bite mark itself, caked with blood and emitting an unpleasant, unfamiliar odor.  He held the paper towel roll as she cleaned the blood off Spike’s shoulder, and wordlessly took away the bloody towels when she was done.  He watched her lift and carry Spike to her bed.  She had just agreed, barely listening, to letting him take the leather coat home to use saddle soap on it, when he cleared his throat.

“Uh, Buffy.”

“Yeah?  What is it?”

Ajay licked his lips self-consciously.  “What’s wrong with his face?”

“What?”  She looked back at Spike.  It struck her how leonine his demon face was.  Also, just how wrong it was that he was wearing it.  Spike didn’t sleep in demon face.  She leaned close and sniffed; the smell from his wounds was unpleasant as mildew, nothing she could associate with Spike.  Though the punctures no longer bled, they gaped open, the skin around them a dark grey.  “Ajay, Spike’s not human.  Do you know a butcher who’d be open at this hour?”

“Uh.” Ajay sat, very suddenly, on the foot of her bed. 

“Ajay.  A butcher?”

“What?  No, no — I don’t think you’ll find one open now.  Uh.”  He ran a hand over his head, further mangling his mohawk.  He swiveled around to look at Spike.  “He’s an alien?  Was he bit by … another alien?”

“What?  No!  He’s from England,” said Buffy.  “He’s just a vampire.”

Ajay stared at Spike for another minute and then looked at Buffy.  He swallowed.  “Are you one too?”  His voice was high.

Buffy started to laugh.

 

***

 

She realized later that she didn’t know exactly how she’d answered, probably only half coherently, her attention was so firmly absorbed by Spike and his frightening inertness.  But Ajay hadn’t asked a lot of questions.  She had a feeling he’d been in shock.  She had sent him home to his lava lamps, and to clean the coat, with the promise that she would update him later.  She was closing her door behind him when she realized that although she had no qualms about trusting Ajay to help them with the mundane, she had no one at all to go to for supernatural advice.  She’d made her new life that way on purpose, hadn’t brought so much as a scribbled list of phone numbers with her — but now that felt a lot less like freedom and more like recklessness.

She knew Willow and Xander’s numbers, of course.  She had no real notion of how they thought of her now, but she was reasonably certain that a call would not spark a frantic research party into how to heal Spike.  Angel — well.  She could probably look up Angel at that hotel.  But if he was aware she was alive, he hadn’t bothered to seek her out.  She didn’t blame him.  When she thought of all the drama, the angst and the heart-wrenching horror of their short relationship, it seemed distant, like something she’d watched but not participated in.  And while she could likely reach Giles through the Council, alerting them to Spike’s weakened state would be flat-out idiocy.  There was nobody likely to want to help her help Spike.

She gathered a clean glass and her only cooking knife from the kitchen.  She sat beside Spike, pushing her fingers through his hair until the gel gave up and released it into curls.  “Spike,” she muttered. “You menace.  Wake up.”  He remained limp as a doll.

Her knife, bought at a grocery store, wasn’t very sharp; it required some pressure to cut her wrist, and it _hurt_ — she’d had much bigger injuries that were far less painful.  It took ridiculously long to collect a half glass of blood, but she lacked the confidence to make the wound deeper.  She really didn’t possess the skillset for vampire nursing.  She tried dribbling the blood into his mouth, cursing with an ease learned from Carly when it dribbled down the glass and onto her pillowcase instead.  A spoon worked better.  On the third mini-spoonful he swallowed, and by the time he’d swallowed it all he’d taken one breath — unnecessary, of course, but she felt unreasonably relieved at movement that suggested his body was working.  She got up to feed Ketchup and take a shower.

When she came back to the bedroom in her pajamas, Spike hadn’t moved.  She thought he looked better, though she couldn’t have said why.  She tugged the sheets and comforter free where they were tucked in against the wall, and turned out the light.  She climbed over him and doubled back under the bedclothes.  She had exactly enough time to wonder how she would ever fall asleep in such a narrow alley between a cold body weighing down the covers and a cold wall, and remembered nothing more.

 

***

 

When she woke, the indirect light in the room had a late morning feel to it.  In sleep, she had turned towards the wall, and now her knee was stiff where it had been jammed against it.  Spike had turned as well, curled towards her above the covers. She realized it was his mumbling that had pulled her into wakefulness.  “Spike?”

“Codfish,” said Spike, more clearly.

“Codfish?” She heard Ketchup heave himself up and pad to the bed, felt his breath as he investigated Spike’s ear.  

“For Bit.”  Buffy couldn’t keep from smiling.  The vampire’s poisoned dreams included feeding Dawn.

“Anything else?”

He was silent.  “Buffy?”

“Yeah, I’m right here.”

“’S good you came.  Needs you.”

Buffy sat up carefully, and reached across him for the knife and cup.

 

***

 

As she fed him the second cup of blood, she talked.  At first just the generic things you say to sick people.  But then she found she’d moved on to the worry that had flowered at the back of her mind during the process of getting him home.  She spooned a little more blood between his lips, pleased that he was swallowing more easily.  “I think you might have been right, y’know, about when I attacked the ghoully guy.   I mean, I over-reacted, hitting him from behind like that, he … I haven’t been slaying, not since you were here last, and I went into overdrive.  And then the, the … his dog.  It was too dangerous to just leave it there — I mean look at you, it probably _had_ to be put down.  But Ketchup would have been just as frantic, if strangers attacked me.”  She rearranged the pillow under his head, and felt him shift a little on his own.  “I haven’t been patrolling, and I think maybe that’s not good for me, you know?  I think maybe I …”  She realized she had fed him all the blood she had, and leaned across him to set the cup back on the night stand.  “I think I’m just too wound up to make good decisions.”

“Did you just say,” muttered Spike painfully, “I was _right_?”

“Spike?”  His eyes were barely open.

“Must be … hallucinatin’.”  He licked his teeth, and began to cough.

“Stop talking, you idiot,” said Buffy, helplessly aware she might cry.  Spike was like a mess-with-Buffy catalyst; everything ungovernable — demons or emotions — came out to play when he was around.  “Stop teasing.  You’re lucky not to be dust.”  She wedged her shoulder under his to prop him up a little further while she added her second pillow.

“Say it again?” whispered Spike, a little more clearly, his eyes on hers.

She looked at him, even more deathly pale than usual, weak, somehow both mocking and earnest.  He was going to be okay.  She took a deep breath.  “ _You idiot_ ,” she said firmly.  “You got yourself poisoned.  Go back to sleep.”   She hesitated a moment and then leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth.  When she sat back up, he had shut his eyes.

 

***

 

_Dear Dawn —_

_I keep trying to write to you, and I don’t know what to say.  Right now I’m sitting on my bed, and Spike is here recovering from a fight that maybe almost killed him.  We were out in the park, and I slayed a demon, and then the demon’s demon-dog almost killed Spike, so I killed the demon dog but I’m not sure anymore about anything_

 

Buffy stopped.  This was no way to write to Dawn, out of nowhere, to tell her that Buffy had come close to getting Spike killed.  He was the one thing Dawn still had of her old life.  And Buffy’s own doubts about her actions, well — they weren’t her sister’s problem.  They weren’t part of what needed fixing between her and Dawn.

She was sitting with her back against the wall, her pad of paper on her knees, her toes just touching Spike’s jeans.  He’d gone right back to sleep, maybe before she’d even sat back up.  In sleep he looked innocent — well, maybe still like a raunchy bad boy, but his hair was mussed into curls, his face relaxed.  The punctures from the bite were still visible, but closed.  He was clearly on the mend.

By Council standards, the only thing Buffy had done wrong tonight was saving Spike.  She wasn’t supposed to weigh the merits of individual demons.  But Spike spent his time worrying over her little sister’s grades and friends and happiness; he was as singular as Ajay, down at the other end of the hall.  And she couldn’t get the elderly-man aspect of that cemetery demon out of her mind; he’d seemed … querulous, maybe confused.  He’d had a pet — a vicious pet, sure, but the owners of the Pekineses — Pekini? — upstairs probably said the same of her.  Her eyes slipped to her dog, now curled in his bed, belly up and one leg stretched, ridiculously, towards the ceiling.

She ripped the sheet off the pad and crumpled it, tossing it to the floor.  Vampires and demons, and dogs and stalky-eyed pet-creatures; she could think about all of them later.  Right now she needed to focus.

 

_Dear Dawn —_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to thank you all for your kindness and enthusiasm about this story! 
> 
> I have lived near one border or another of Prospect Park for at least 20 of my 30 years in New York, and would have said I knew it very well (with the possible exception of some of the war monuments in wooded areas that are overgrown with vines and underbrush). But I only stumbled across the Friends Cemetery contained within it while writing this fic. It is extremely peaceful, and so nondescript that most people probably do not realize they are passing a cemetery. The internet informs me that it predates the park, and that Montgomery Clift is buried there. I can’t vault the fence like Buffy, and digging under the gate like Ketchup seems rude, so I have not been inside.
> 
> Also, I am going to try to get the last two chapters posted on time, but I’ve started a new case that is already making for very, very long days. If I end up delayed, I apologize in advance!


	5. Social Skills

_April 2003_

 

Buffy stood on Houston Street, staring narrowly across it at her busy, slightly run-down, salami-festooned target.  Spike needed pastrami, in Spain.  Or, at any rate, Dawn had decided he needed pastrami.  Or maybe she had had an argument with him comparing pastrami to some more Spanishy lunch meat, and had impulsively asked her big sister to ship them some.  Dawn’s letter stated clearly, if mysteriously, that the pastrami had to be _from cats_.  Buffy had never tasted pastrami and wasn’t sure how it was made, but that had sounded very, very wrong.

Carly had rolled her eyes and identified Katz’s as the place.  According to Carly, it had been the place for pastrami for over a hundred years.  Also according to Carly, Buffy had to have a sandwich while she was there.  Carly had been emphatic about the rye bread, the mustard, and the house pickles, with an intensity that reminded Buffy of nothing so much as Giles insisting on the precision needed for a ritual to prevent the end of the world.

Buffy had begun to depend on the regular arrival of Dawn’s letters. They were thick packets, softened from their overseas journey, full of rambling thoughts regarding anything that crossed Dawn’s mind while the pen was in her hand — clearly, her sister didn’t struggle to fill the pages.  People whose names had never come up before were discussed off-handedly, as though it would be obvious why someone named Maria’s insistence on wearing clogs made her _such a hypocrite_.  The dozens of little out-of-context details … they might not form a clear picture, not like an essay, but they told her huge amounts about Dawn.  That she was happy, some of the time, but had low and anxious periods; that she was deeply involved with school and her classmates; that she had made herself a home in Barcelona, with people she might like sometimes and not like at others, but who loomed large in her world.  She didn’t seem to mind that Buffy’s replies were much shorter, much more awkwardly written, far less expressive.  Maybe she just accepted that Buffy had never exactly been word-girl.

And of course, there was always plenty about Spike in Dawn’s letters, whether direct or implied.  When Dawn got her rebellion on, it clearly wasn’t their father’s authority that she was bucking.  _Maybe I don’t want to pour my heart and soul into every single English Lit paper_ , she groused in one letter.  She and Spike were coming to visit in July, when the International School had spring break.  Buffy had no idea how the trip could possibly have been explained away to Hank.

When she pushed through the door into the deli, she was greeted by pure spectacle: at least a thousand salamis hung from the walls.  The cavernous room was jam-packed and raucous, with crowded tables down the left and center, and counters to the right numbered by hanging signs.  If now and then one of the many counter lines hadn’t inched forward, it would have been impossible to discern that the crowd was made up of lines at all.  One man in a white paper cap was repeating, over and over, “Hang onto your ticket!  Don’t lose your ticket!”  Buffy took a small orange slip from him and passed to the next white-capped man, who was announcing that the wait for table service was half an hour; that hotdogs, knishes and soup were stations #1 through #3; that chopped meats were cutters #4 through #7; that drinks and fries were station #8; that bagels and salads were past the drinks; that bulk and mail order was in the back; that if you wanted table service, you had to talk to him; that lost ticket charges would apply.  Buffy waited to speak to him, mildly stunned by the commotion.  In addition to the salamis, the deli was decorated with hundreds of framed photos of people.  The few Buffy recognized suggested that they all were, or at least once had been, celebrities.  Aging war-time signage hung from the ceiling: _Senda Salami to Your Boy in the Army!_   Neon beer logos peppered the walls.  The second man restarted his spiel.  She could sense demons, but she couldn’t for the life of her think what harm they could be up to, in this well-lit temple of sandwich meat.  Maybe they, like Spike, just needed a pastrami fix.

The white-capped man paused a moment as she shouted her question at him, then leaned forward so he could answer in a normal tone directly into her ear.  “Here’s what y’do.  Go to window #1 and get yourself a hotdog, a proper hotdog with mustard and sauerkraut, just to tide you over.  Then you work your way all the way down to the last station at the back for the mail order, they’ll take your name.  Then you get in line #7 for the sandwich, it’s always the shortest, and sit at one of the tables near mail order and listen for your name while you eat.  Got that, darling?”

Buffy started to laugh; it seemed impossible to find the end of any particular line.  But she knew the hotdog station was behind her somewhere to the right.  “Got it.”

Once she was seated — as instructed, near the mail order counter — she addressed the pastrami with her full attention.  She hadn’t known exactly what to make of it when the cutter had offered up a couple tiny slices on a plate for her approval, with a line about an extra fatty cut that somehow came off as flirtatious; but she got it now.  It was almost painfully delicious.  Well worth shipping to the other side of the world.  The pickles were a perfect counterpart, crisp and sour.  The demon vibes, the noise, and the jostling crowd melted into a pleasant background hum as she ate everything, down to the very last fallen scraps.

 

***

 

As she waited to sign the shipping slip to send the pastrami to Barcelona, Buffy studied the wall behind the counter.  Salamis hung on strings every few inches, interrupted by old-fashioned scales and slicing machines.  A board that looked like it had been hand-painted in the ’30s announced prices by the pound, the numbers inserted on small hanging slats.  Buffy was mulling the existence of _garlicwurst_ when the counterman interrupted her thoughts.  “Slayer, here’s your order.” Startled, she looked closer:  an older man, his face deeply lined, wearing a white paper hat.  Between his voice and his face, she would guess he was from Central or South America, but his pupils were flattened sideways like a goat.

“Thank you,” she said slowly.

“Could feel you,” said the man.  “Like goosebumps.  Didn’t know we had a Slayer again — thought I’d heard she was out in the Rust Belt.”

“You’re not a vamp.”

The man laughed easily.  “Nah.  Not such great employees, vamps.  Punctuality?  Fahgettabout it.  But us Mekos, we’re good workers.”  He winked at her, obviously untroubled by either his status or her own.  “Enjoy the sandwich?”

“I did.”  Buffy stared at him.  “I enjoyed it so much I forgot I could sense demons here.  It’s not just you, is it?”

He cocked his head at her.  “My uncle works down in the curing room.  And one of the cutters over there — I’m not sure what he is.  Doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?”

“Everyone’s welcome here, Slayer.  Have a knish, eat your sandwich … senda salami.  This is New York.”

 

***

 

The crocodile slept —

The crocodile sought the dark bottom —

The crocodile slipped into the water, and Buffy’s pink skirts floated away from the bodice of her costume —

No.  The crocodile was traversing the bedroom, slow and steady and cool.  Buffy hung suspended in that state where she could almost think about her dream as she dreamt it; though it was a loose sort of thinking, her mind swimming sideways through dream layers and half-memories, instantly switching things up to incorporate inconsistencies.  A distant horn beeped intermittently, and now she was lying in her childhood bed in Los Angeles where she’d first met the crocodile, traffic outside.  Dawn was asleep below her in the bunk bed.  She hadn’t thought of these footie pajamas, with the comical dogs, in at least a decade.  The crocodile was old and protected, and needed nothing from the world.  _Be a big girl, don’t cry_ — the crocodile would never cry.  Or if it did, those tears were false, betraying nothing.  _When you were little, we never had to worry about you, Buffy._   Buffy’d been stalwart for such a long time, so long; she’d been praised for it.  _If Dawn stubbed her toe the world was ending, but you never were a whiney child._

Buffy fumbled one-handedly for the button on top of the clock, and the beeping finally stopped.  It took her a minute to remember why she needed to be up early:  she and Ketchup had homework from Phil the dog trainer.  Her dog needed to develop social skills with other dogs, to help temper his guarding behavior.  Off-leash hours in the park ended at nine.

She sat up, tugging the blanket out from under the dog to free her legs.  Ketchup grunted and sighed heavily.  Somehow, over the winter, this had become routine.  When she got under the covers, he tucked himself into a tidy curl in his own bed; by morning he sprawled magnificently across hers.  How he managed the transition and consigned her to a corner of the mattress, all without waking her, was a mystery.

 

***

 

Buffy had never been out with Ketchup at a standard morning dog-walking hour before.  The number of people headed to Prospect Park with dogs … well, she supposed it wasn’t so many people, perhaps a dozen in view; but that was ten more than she had ever seen on her block at the same time.  Their paths all converged towards the small local entrance to the park.  They were dressed in business suits and track suits, straw hats and baseball caps.  They led tiny dogs rolling their eyes in nervousness, stolid medium mutts, and a bevy of pit-blends with wide lolling smiles. One pit-bulldog mix with a pink nose and no neck resembled nothing so much as a happy, waddling potato in a sweater.  Ketchup hated each of them, and only Buffy’s slayer strength saved her from spilling her coffee as he made a spectacle of his detestation.

She shortened the leash as they approached the arching stone underpass that would lead to the Nethermead.  Phil had told her not to get excited when Ketchup growled and barked, that it would only compound his agitation, but it was hard to ignore the dirty looks other dog owners gave her.  She couldn’t really fault them — it was reasonable to be scared for your little dog when a much bigger dog lunged at it — but she also felt unfairly judged.  She’d saved the world, died multiple times doing it, and these people were shooting daggers her way because her dog was a loudmouth.

When they rounded the curve of the path and the Nethermead came into view, Ketchup strained forward.  It was the same meadow she’d first whistled at him in, but it looked entirely different on a sunny spring morning.  The ground squelched a little under her feet, still loose and water-logged from the thaw; she could smell the recently-cut grass.  The other dogs and owners were gathered towards the shady end.  People chatted in loose groups, while their animals frolicked.  Delighted to be off their leashes, they sniffed butts and chased balls, tails high.  Occasionally, two or three dogs broke into a casual loping run, punctuated by an even more occasional bark.

“Sit,” commanded Buffy.  Ketchup paid her no attention, focusing entirely on the dogs until she actually pulled out the bag of treats.  Then he sat so hard he bounced a little.  “Yeah, right,” said Buffy.  She unhooked the leash.  Ketchup leaned his head back against her waist, looking up at her, until she offered the treat.  “C’mon, Ketchup.  We have a mission.  We have to spend time with other dogs.”  She marched towards the group.

This is going to be fine, thought Buffy with relief.  Phil had told her Ketchup might be less aggressive away from their block, and it seemed to be true.  The other dogs were too busy investigating each other to pay the keyed-up deerhound much mind.  And they were cute, very cute, these dogs doing the doggie-social thing.  

She was distracted enough by a clueless, joy-fueled puppy that she entirely missed how the snarling began — but suddenly a large, boxy black and white dog and Ketchup were engaged in what sounded like a battle, even though they weren’t actually touching each other. Their growls erupted into barks as they circled and darted.  People began calling their dogs, tugging them away, as Buffy tried to distract Ketchup.  But his teeth were bared, his posture pure furious wolf.  A woman was screaming, “Buster!  Buster!” at the black and white dog.

Suddenly, both dogs were running, at a full gallop, away from the group and down the length of the field.  A small golden dog zipped exuberantly after them.  The three disappeared down into a hollow and charged back up into sight.  First one dog was in the lead, than the other; they were no longer barking as they bolted out of the far end of the Nethermead and vanished into the woods.  They’d traversed the whole meadow in less than a minute.

Buffy realized that Buster’s woman and a man, who no doubt belonged to the golden dog, were staring at her accusatorially.  The entire group of people had fallen quiet.  She stared back.  What was she supposed to do?  If she raced after the dogs at slayer speed there was some tiny chance she’d find them, out in the vastness of the park or the rest of Brooklyn; but then she’d definitely have some explaining to do.  Buster-woman let out a snort and turned back towards where the dogs had gone.  She brought her hands up to her mouth and hollered, _“Buuuuuuster!”_

Buffy was preparing to run after the dogs when a blur of movement caught her eye, from the opposite side of the wooded hill.  Ketchup was in the lead; behind him hurtled Buster and the golden dog.  Their running had taken on a different flavor, still a fast gallop but no longer interactive; movement as an end in itself.  Ketchup’s head was tilted back as though it couldn’t quite keep up with the speed of his legs.   As he got closer, he slowed to a lope, over-shooting Buffy in a wide curl that ended with his nose coming to rest demurely in her palm.

The humans in the park lost interest in Ketchup and Buffy once their dogs returned.  She was guessing that, emergency over, they found their earlier hostility faintly embarrassing.  As they should. Ketchup might be the new dog, but all three dogs had chosen to race away.  And really, she was perfectly happy not to try making small talk with them now.  She headed across the field, towards the cemetery.  

The path was rich with the smells of soil and new vegetation. Ketchup had enjoyed the snowy winter, but now he was equally enthused by the moist, springy earth, and the fronds and shoots emerging from it; he zigged from side to side in short bursts, long nose everywhere.  She had walked to the cemetery often since the night she and Spike had found themselves in it.  It still troubled her, the way the encounter there had gone down, though she wasn’t sure what kind of resolution she thought she would uncover after the fact.  

When Merrick had first explained her calling to her, it had all been so clear.  Vampires were evil; people were good.  People had souls, and that made all the difference.  The duty Buffy had been called to was absolute.

The clarity of those ideas remained compelling long after reality had kicked the crap out of them.  First Angel muddied them up; then Angelus reasserted them; then Spike made them look quaint.  The demon world sprawled ever wider and more varied.  And humans — well, Ford and Maggie Walsh polluted the very notion of a soul being an assurance of anything.

And Spike — she had no idea how to reduce what she felt about Spike to words.  She no longer doubted he had stuck by his sire for a hundred years out of love.  In retrospect, she knew she’d counted on that fact, even back when he’d been a more appropriately crass and vicious Big Bad.  She’d never doubted he would release his captives to save Drusilla.  And she’d known without a doubt he’d keep his promise to protect Dawn, even if she hadn’t imagined he’d help a frequently annoying teenager conjugate verbs in a new language to do it.  

Engrossed in her thoughts, she was already inside the grounds before she realized the cemetery gate had been wide open.  An SUV was parked by the cottage, a small crowd gathered near the door.  “Hello,” said a woman who had come from somewhere to Buffy’s left.  “Have you just wandered in?  I’m the pastor here.  We aren’t actually open to the public.  We’re just finishing up a board meeting.”  She looked motherly and matter-of-fact.

“Oh,” said Buffy, unaccountably embarrassed.  “I’m sorry — I was just walking the dog.”

“A nice morning for it.  Still, if you wouldn’t mind putting him on a leash.  I know it’s hard to tell, but this is a final resting place.”

“Right, right … I know.”  Buffy squatted and held her hands wide to Ketchup.  Sometimes he would trot right to her in response, but not today; he was too interested in socializing with these pleasantly dogless people.  “We found it by accident a few months ago.  I didn’t know cemeteries _had_ boards.  Ketchup?  Come on.  Ketchup!”

“That’s a cute name.”  The woman watched Ketchup ignore Buffy.  “We aren’t a very active board.  Or cemetery.  There aren’t a lot of Quakers left in New York.  But we lost our groundskeeper a few months back.  Ansle’d been with us … just about forever.”

Buffy slowed as she got out a salmon treat.  “I think I met him, back in the winter.”  Ketchup came to her, and she hooked his leash on.  She looked at the pastor.  “Was he … older?”

The woman was watching her with a faint frown.  “Yes, he was quite old.  May I ask … when you met him, how did he seem?  I’ve known him since I was a child, but I hadn’t made time to come visit yet this year.”

Buffy felt leaden.  Guilt — this was what guilt felt like.  “He seemed … he seemed … a little confused, really.  A little frightening.”

“Ah, ah.”  The woman was distressed.  “We’d known we needed to find a place for him to retire to, he was getting erratic, but he was difficult.  Very … dedicated to his work.  I’d thought maybe the Catskills somewhere, but getting him to agree …”  She shook her head.

Trying to settle an ancient demon into a nursing home — oh, god.  An erratic old demon with wings.  And a deadly pet.  “I’m sorry,” said Buffy in a rush.  “I’m very, very sorry for your loss.”

There was a silence, and then the woman spoke much more deliberately, as though restating an argument she’d already been through.  “In some ways, it was a blessing.  That he died here, as the guardian he was.  Doing what he had always done.  He didn’t know anything else.  You understand?”

Buffy licked her lips.  “But people can change, right?  He might have been okay, in the Catskills — the right place, somewhere special —”

“Sure,” said the pastor gently, and Buffy realized she didn’t even know what kind of reassurance she was seeking.  Did she want the demon to be dangerous, to justify her slay?  Or did she want the extra guilt of knowing there could have been a place for him to go?  “Sure.  Nothing’s impossible.”  

 

***

 

The knock was so tentative that Buffy might have missed it, from her bedroom, if not for the dog.  But there was a zero-percent chance of Ketchup failing to notice a knock.  He was instantly on his feet barking, his body twisting back and forth before the door in excitement.  Buffy had to manhandle him out of the way to get to the door herself.

He quieted when it turned out to be Ajay, whose frohawk was now much shorter and a deep green-blue.  She’d seen him only a few times since Spike’s visit — she’d found the cleaned-up duster folded neatly outside her door that morning, and then Ajay’d been away for the holidays.  Since then, they’d said hello a few times in passing in the entrance of the building.  If he’d been avoiding her, she couldn’t blame him.  That would be a pretty moderate response to discovering there were vampires walking around, in general; and that you’d been flirting with someone who could eat you, in particular.  Although she didn’t know if he’d gotten around to that particular realization.  Right now, Ajay wore a genuine, if slightly shy, smile.  “Hey, Buffy.”

“Hey, Ajay.”

“I was wondering if you’d like to come over.  I’ve got something to show you.”

So now she was standing in Ajay’s apartment, again mesmerized by the sheer volume of colors percolating around her.  It took her a moment to realize that she was meant to be appreciating a single lamp, currently alone on his kitchen table.  As she watched, a thick red blob detached and floated upward through yellow liquid, rounding to a sphere as it rose.  A vaguely militaristic wing-like symbol, in tarnished gold, perched at the top of the glass.  She frowned, trying to remember where she’d seen that before, and realized Ajay was speaking.

“… lot of them out there, you know — not a lot compared to Spiderman, but still, a lot of variations — but I liked this one for you because it’s simple, y’know?  An off-brand, but that just means it’s rare.”  He beamed, and then his face fell a little at her bewilderment.  “It’s a Wonder Woman lamp,”  he said gently.  “For my friend the superhero.  I thought you should have a superhero lamp.”

Buffy felt vaguely ill at ease.  “It’s lovely, Ajay— and that’s a lovely thought— but I’m really not—”  She hadn’t saved Ajay from anything.  In fact, a vampire had an open invitation to his apartment right now because she lived next door.  She tried to think of how to explain that she didn’t qualify for the lamp.

“You rescued Spike and carried him home,” said Ajay.

“That … that’s _true_ ,” said Buffy.  “But it’s not really what my abilities are for.  I’m supposed to — if anything, I’m supposed to kill him.”

That got his attention.  “But you’re not going to, right?  He takes care of your sister.”

“No.  No, I’m not going to kill Spike.  My life … my life is really complicated.  But I’m not a hero.  Not any more.”

There was a moment of quiet, as they both watched another red glob pull up and away towards the last one.  “Well.  The lamp is for you.  And I made a pot of chili — would you like some chili?  We could take it out back and figure out the barbecue.”  At her clueless face, he prompted, “The barbecue when your sister visits.”

“Oh.  Oh, right.”  

There was another silence.  Ajay let out a long breath.  “And I wanted to ask, _where_ do you keep the coffin?  I mean, your apartment is even smaller than mine.”

“Coffin?”

“For Spike to sleep in?  When he visits?”

“I— I— uh. Ajay.”  She saw the sly smile start in his eyes, and slowly narrowed her own at him.  

“Just kidding,” said Ajay happily.  “I live next to a superhero who gets visits from a hot vampire-man.  Let’s eat, and figure out how we’re gonna get a grill through the window.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one chapter to go!
> 
> Many, many thanks to OffYourBird and sandy_s, whose comments on the original draft made me think, think, think, about all my loose ends and ended up triggering this whole new chapter that you just read. Also to everyone who’s been leaving me nice notes, especially bewildered (whose comment comparing Buffy to a lava lamp heating up suddenly gave me a better chapter ending). 
> 
> Research, of course, required that I go to Katz’s to get a hotdog, and a pastrami on rye, and a pint, and full-sours and half-sours, all for the sake of the Elysian Fields 2017 Reunion Challenge … oh, how I suffer for art!


	6. Dawn

_July 2003_

 

In all her fleetingly imagined versions of going to the airport to meet Dawn — not even fantasies, just odd moments when her mind leapt ahead to the event — Spike had always been beside her. To steady her or to needle her; to take whatever she was dishing out and give it back in a form that would keep her going. That made no sense, of course. Spike lived in Spain with Dawn; he was crossing the ocean somewhere in the night sky with her right now. Buffy’s thoughts derailed for a moment at that unbidden image: the conspicuous Big Bad and her sister, hedged in by other passengers and armrests and tiny tray tables, pulling the crimped tin tops off their meals to reveal rubbery chicken and sad, token carrots.

She had been doing okay on the subway. Even in the late-night hours, the A train towards JFK bustled with life: nurses heading home after late shifts; janitors headed out for early ones; coifed flight attendants with prim roller bags; and random travelers with messier luggage, rumpled and sweat-soaked from their struggles up and down the sweltering subway stairs. A sad, sticky beach ball had lolled under a seat, evidence of some family day trip to the Rockaways. Her agitation and uncertainty, in that setting, were just one more private matter among a million daily dramas.

But the link to the airport might as well be transportation for a whole different city. Where the subway screeched, the AirTrain sighed. The subway’s garbled-yet-urgent announcements, blasting unintelligibly from ancient speakers, were replaced with a crisp, calm AI voice. Once she was on it, she found herself turning to a Spike who wasn’t actually there. There was nowhere, on the air-conditioned AirTrain, to have a meltdown because you were about to reintroduce yourself to a beloved sister you’d abandoned — not without feeling like an animal on display in a zoo. Buffy held it in.  

 

***

 

Standing in the waiting area outside of customs, Buffy scanned the incoming passengers compulsively. She checked the young women over and over again. Dawn had been the most important thing in her world — Buffy’s certainty of sisterly love had made the decision to leap off that tower one of the simplest she’d ever made, barely a decision at all — but for months, she’d had only the abstract memory of that feeling. And too, there was that photo on the fridge. The Dawn it showed was not entirely familiar. The steam of arriving travelers thickened, then thinned down to a trickle. Buffy shuffled back to the flight board to confirm what she already knew: their plane had landed forty minutes ago, on time, somewhere on the far side of luggage and customs.

Turning back, her eyes flew, magnetized, straight to the hat. The ridiculous, multi-colored hat with tassels she’d become certain was all wrong as a gift as soon as she’d sent it off with Spike. That was Dawn wearing it, too tall and too composed, but still obviously Dawn. She was wearing the wool monstrosity out of season even though it clashed with her sleek jacket, and chattering intensely at the vampire with the flaring black trench coat beside her, his skin practically green-white under the fluorescents — and how on earth did Spike get into the country anyway, so conspicuously a member of the undead? Did no one in security have _eyes?_

By the time the thought had passed through her mind, Buffy was somehow across the room, her arms full of warm, lively Dawn and her face smashed into the drooping hat as though she could inhale more of her sister. Dawn was much taller than she had been. For long moments, though she could tell both Dawn and Spike were speaking, she could make nothing out of it, just letting their voices wash over her. “Buffy? Buffy? You’re hurting me—”

“Dawn, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—” Buffy barely recognized her own raspy voice.

“Buffy, stop crying, I’m not mad at you anymore, stop crying — Spike?”

She felt hands on her shoulders, pulling her firmly back from Dawn, and half-turned and buried her face into his shoulder instead, pulling Dawnie with her. She felt their warm and cool arms around her as she sobbed inconsolably into the familiar black duster.

Spike had been the one to recognize that it was getting dangerously close to daybreak while they were still in the airport. Buffy only foggily remembered the process of somehow bypassing the taxi line and getting directly into a sedan with nearly black-tinted windows — had it involved a flash of fang? Somehow, the luggage had all been stowed away while she herself was still dry-hiccuping into Dawn’s hair. It wasn’t til she felt Spike slide into the seat from the other side, stroking her back much the way she soothed Ketchup during thunderstorms, that she’d finally let herself relax, half against his shoulder and half against the seat. “Oh, Dawnie,” she said, suddenly aware of what a mess she must be. “I’m so sorry.”

Dawn gave her a small, odd smile as she fished through her purse for tissue. “I know, Buffy. You’ve said it like a _bejillion_ times. Here, hold still.” It was the nicest thing in the world, to let this strange, grown-up little sister clean her face while the family vampire rubbed her shoulders. At that thought, she felt her eyes inexplicably brimming again. “I promise,” said Dawn seriously, “that I will never be mad at you again if you will just not hug me quite that hard.” She finished swiping at Buffy’s face, and then shook her own hair back with such a teenage flounce that the adult persona disconcertingly vanished. “Are we there yet? I wanna meet your doggie! How’d you get a dog, anyway? Did you go to a rescue?”

Buffy took a deep breath and let herself relax back against Spike. “No — no. He found me.”

 

***

 

It was unfortunate, thought Buffy, that Dawn still had a very young squeal. Ketchup knew and accepted Spike as a comrade, one of Buffy’s pack, but Dawn’s cry of excitement at meeting the dog had visibly raised his hackles. He stood much as he had stood before Buffy the night they met, head lowered and rumbling almost out of the range of hearing, in the doorway to the bedroom. Dawn was comically frozen in front of the apartment door, eyes wide. Spike leaned against the refrigerator, apparently quite relaxed, but Buffy had a notion he’d have Ketchup in a headlock in a nanosecond if things went South.

Not that they would. Her dog was a good dog.

Buffy sat in the center of the couch. “Here, sit here, Dawn,” she said, patting the couch beside her. “I learned this thing he really likes.”

Dawn looked dubious, but sat, tentatively, away from the dog.

“Ketchup! Get up here.” Buffy thumped the couch on the other side of her authoritatively. The dog climbed onto the futon, bumped his butt down next to Buffy’s leg, and breathed out in a long shudder. “Good dog. Now watch.” She rubbed up and down his ribcage with her finger tips, so they rode the bones like waves, rhythmically and with some force. After a moment, Ketchup groaned, tentatively pushing his rear leg to the side to expose his belly. He looked steadfastly away as she rubbed him.

“Love,” said Spike, very gently. “You didn’t know dogs like to be pet?”

“He’s a tricky dog,” said Buffy. “He doesn’t like very much.” She kept rubbing the coarse grey fur a minute. “And see what he does now.” She removed her hands and sat back a little. Ketchup moaned, then wriggled backwards, until his bony spine pushed against her. He shifted his weight back slowly, slowly, until his front paws levitated up off the futon and his back was flattened against Buffy’s side; then he tilted his long nose until the top of his cranium rested against her ear, his snout pointed straight up towards the ceiling. He held very still. Buffy’s eyes flicked to Dawn. “See? Here, rub the top of his head.” When Dawn reached around to rub him, his eyes slowly closed.

“An’ don’t you two look inordinately pleased with your skills, petting that dog into oblivion,” said Spike. “Dog slayers, the both of you.”  

 

***

 

“Is this the smallest apartment in Manhattan?” asked Dawn, incredulous, staring through the door at the bedroom.

“This _isn’t_ Manhattan,” said Buffy.

“Is this the smallest apartment in ‘the Big Apple’?” Dawn made exaggerated air quotes around the phrase.

“No,” said Spike. “There are apartments with the bathtub right in the kitchen, and a shared toilet in the hallway.”

“Whoa,” said Dawn, impressed. “Do you think the NYU dorms are like that?”

“Think I’m going to let you live in a dorm, Niblet, with your sister in town?”

“Well, I’m not living _here_. Not that it’s not great,” she added quickly. “But it’s _way_ too small for three people and the Hound of the Baskervilles.”

Spike appeared suddenly fascinated by his own boots as Dawn went on, “But you should keep the lava lamp. That’s cool.”

“Oh,” said Buffy. “Do I have something to show you tomorrow.”

 

***

 

How many times, when they were growing up, had she been woken up by Dawn giggling? For a moment she didn’t know where or when she was. “ _You’re_ a crocodile,” said Dawn. “And a bed hog, too.”

Buffy opened her eyes, groggy — she’d ended up pressed against the cold wallboard by Ketchup, but even so she felt nearly drugged by sleep and warmth. “Dog. It’s mostly the dog.” Ketchup lay very still, like a large log down the center of the bed. Even in the half light, she could see that his eyes were alert to the terrible possibility of being expelled.

“You talked a lot in your sleep,” said Dawn, from the far side of the dog.

“Did it wake you?”

“A couple times. But look up: it’s so pretty.” Buffy awkwardly shifted to her back, and Ketchup wriggled a little to fit against her better. The light from the lava lamp was mostly just an indistinct glow, but now and then a reddish tinge would slowly overtake the ceiling.

“Ajay told me about a lava lamp chandelier,” said Buffy.   “He said when the lamps are higher up it’s like the Northern Lights.”

Dawn giggled some more. “That’s where you sent Spike to sleep? The look on his face! Am I going to meet Ajay?”

 

***

 

Buffy had been nonplussed when Carly showed up for the barbecue in heels — Ajay’s “garden” was actually a fenced-in cement plot with a central drain hole, accessible only by one of his rear windows. It easily could have resembled a prison yard — but Ajay had made it welcoming with tubs of red impatiens, the grill they’d lugged in together, and a hodgepodge of chairs. Still, it wasn’t exactly easy access.

Brian, Carly’s husband, had just laughed at Buffy’s dismay. “Like Carly’d let anything stop her. It’s me who’ll need a hand.” And it was true — Carly was boosting herself up through the window in no time, as though balancing on a window sill in a crouch was what heels were designed to do.

Brian himself was a surprise. Buffy thought highly of Carly — she was irrepressible and irreverent and kind — but somehow she hadn’t envisioned a much younger professor husband. “I’m just an adjunct professor, at Brooklyn College,” he demurred. “Carly likes to over-state my credentials.”

“Gotta work with what I’ve got,” said Carly. “I married an egghead.”

“I didn’t even know there were professors of language theory,” said Buffy. “You should talk to my sister.” Carly nudged Brian and gestured behind Buffy with a jerk of her chin; Buffy turned just in time to see Spike leap away from the grill as flames shot skyward. As though it wasn’t bad enough he was outside during the day. He had insisted there was no threat in the long and deepening shadows of the buildings.

Buffy watched for a moment. Spike was inspecting his duster for embers damage; Carly had moved to the grill and was saying something to him and Ajay, who still held a can of lighter fluid. The Chinese lanterns strung along the fence glowed brighter as evening darkened the sky. Brian and Dawn were talking now by the window, animated and easy. Ketchup was stalking the card table with its array of chips, dips, buns, and uncooked meat. She realized Ajay hadn’t invited anyone of his own; this was for her, just because it made him happy to do something for a friend.

“Buffy!” said Brian from behind her, and she turned to him. “Carly hadn’t told me your sister was at an international high school! That’s so exciting.”

“It is pretty great,” said Dawn. “The immersion thing.”

“I don’t think many American teenagers would even think of it. What made you decide to leave California?”

Dawn opened her mouth to answer, and stopped. Her eyes sought Buffy’s. “Oh,” said Buffy. “Oh. Brian. You don’t have a beer. Or would you like some of that wine you brought?”

“I’ll get it,” said Dawn.

 

***

 

Buffy stood at Ajay’s sink, squeezing lemon halves over a carafe. She had a view of the full backyard from here, through the window over the faucet.

It was an excuse, to come in and make lemonade; an escape. She cared for everyone here, her friends and her old enemy, and she loved Dawn fiercely — but it had suddenly been too much to be with them all at the same time. These were people from her first life, full of supernatural drama; and from her now-life, full of jotted lists of cocktails and meals. She could have a conversation with any of them, one-on-one, but putting them together in one place — how had she not known that would be confusing and hard?

From inside the apartment, everything was easier, even though she was only a few feet from where Carly and Ajay now stood chatting. It was as though the window casing were a picture frame, showcasing scenes from her life. A safe, digestible home-movie of people she cared for. It made it simple to cherish them.

“No,” laughed Carly, her words floating in by some trick of acoustics. “I’m _not_ a superhero, but _thank you_ for asking.”

 

***

 

“You got sentenced to lemonade duty?” said Buffy, as Dawn stomped in the window.

Dawn evaded her gaze. She could be so adult, this Dawn, with her features settling towards maturity, but she could also be every bit as petulant as when she was thirteen. “You know, Spike’s the _only one_ in Spain who makes a fuss if a girl sips a little wine.” She looked up, focusing on what Buffy was doing, and grinned a little. “Remember to use sugar this time?”

“I still have no idea how much to use. You wanna be my taste tester?”

“N, O, no.” said Dawn. “I tasted your lemonade on parent-teacher night, remember?”

“How could I forget.”

“If you’d told me _that_ night that years later, Spike would be proofreading my college applications —” Dawn paused, frowning, as Buffy began to smile. Spike’s attack on the school had been memorable; a step up from the villains Buffy’d encountered before that.   Hot, too; though at that age she hadn’t had enough experience to fully recognize how outrageously he’d been flirting. Dawn, she realized, had stopped laughing, her face suddenly scrunched.

“What’s up, Dawnie?”

“Do you think I existed then?”

“Of course you — oh. Oh. It doesn’t matter, Dawn.”

“I just … I wonder, sometimes, if maybe it does make a difference, whether the memories are real or manufactured. You know, all of Dad’s memories are probably fake ones, and sometimes when I’m talking to him —”

“Does he look right past you, like he’s waiting to move on to something else?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s just … when I talk to Spike, I can feel the connection, that we’ve been through real stuff together and he cares about me. When I talk to Dad, I don’t even feel like he really knows I’m there.”

Buffy reached out and pulled Dawn in beside her. She could hear someone else coming in the window from the yard, and dropped her voice a little. “It’s not you. It’s nothing to do with you. It’s Dad, it’s just Dad. He doesn’t know how to love people. It’s how he talked to me, the last few times I saw him, and Mom, too — and they were married sixteen years.” Dawn looked at her doubtfully. “Dawn, Spike told me that you were worried I’d forgotten you, and I know it had to seem that way. But that wasn’t you either. It was me, my problems, my … my head wasn’t on right. I didn’t come back to life all at once, not right away. It wasn’t about you.”

She turned her head and her eyes met Spike’s, now standing awkwardly in the kitchen. His hands were red. “Is that blood?”

“Ground chuck,” said Spike. “And onions and spices. Lava Boy’s got them grilling now. Rare with blue cheese, right, Dawn?”

Dawn perked up. “Any anchovies?”

“Let me wash up and I’ll check.”

“So … my sophisticated, globe-trotting, educated sister still likes the gross stuff?”

“My palette,” Dawn said grandly, “has expanded. Now I eat octopus, and super stinky cheese.”

 

***

 

“That,” said Buffy with satisfaction, pointing to a chunky, hunched bird silhouetted against the water, “is a night-crowned heron of darkness.”

“I think you’re mixing taxologies.” Skepticism radiated off Dawn, even in the unlit park.

“What? No. Stuffing dead animals is _gross_.” What had Spike been teaching her sister? “I got a bird book after I started walking the dog here.”

They were meandering along the edge of the peninsula in the park, the warm night air swollen with frog sounds. The sisters had slipped out to relieve Ketchup, who had valiantly defended Ajay’s party from a dangerous array of dropped and unattended food for hours. “Buffy?”

The uncertain edge in Dawn’s voice caught at her. “Yeah? What’s wrong?”

“No — nothing. It’s just … I was joking about the apartment being too small — but I do want to come here. I want to apply to college here.” Her voice got small. “If you want me to.”

For a second all the words clotted in Buffy’s throat, and in the gap she could feel Dawn beginning to shrink. Ketchup nosed past them again, investigating the rich scents at the edge of the lake.

“Bigger apartment. Got it,” said Buffy. She winced at herself. But it made it easier not to burst into yet more tears, this talking around the edges of things. “You sure you don’t want to just get bunkbeds again?”

“As _if_ ,” said Dawn, instantly rallied. “And there’s no room for Spike. We’ll have to find another basement so he doesn’t dust by accident.”

“Yeah,” said Buffy after a minute. “Yeah, we will.”

She looked at Dawn, this strange and familiar Dawn standing beside her. There was barely enough light to make out her features. She was so much more open than Buffy; she rushed so transparently from anger to laughter to forgiveness. So much a youngest child. So absolutely herself and no one else. The monks had only been interested in saving the world, but they’d given Buffy this, too. Threaded backwards through her memories like a lifeline, this extraordinary gift. A sister, who was going to come live with her, and would need love and care, and be hair-pullingly annoying, and go through dating heart-break and fall in with the wrong crowd and be mortified by her under-educated sibling and stay out too late at terrible sleazy clubs without calling home and

“It’s going to be _great_ ,” said Buffy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In 2014, I reluctantly inherited a peach-colored standard poodle. She’s a smart, strong, mischievous dog. I have stolen many traits and mini-stories from Gershwin and passed them along wholesale to Ketchup — including her somewhat aggressive love of ketchup packets. Also, a riff on her first trip to off-leash hours, when she incited a mass run-away from all the people, off, off into the distance, out of sight, to find some better meadow where squirrels are slow and barbecue falls freely to the ground … but this is fiction, so Ketchup is less ridiculous and better behaved than the fabulous Miss G.
> 
> Note: Prospect Park has a thriving colony of black-crowned night herons.


End file.
